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‘That can be me.’
She’s older than I first thought, with lines around her eyes, but a nice smile. Her full hips are packed into a short grey dress. She holds out her hand. Red polish on long fingernails. ‘I’m Kellie.’
‘Cyrus,’ I reply.
She tickles the inside of my palm with a finger as our hands touch. ‘I’ll have a Rusty Nail.’
I go to the bar and order the drinks. Kellie takes out her phone and uses it as a mirror, checking her make-up. I wonder for a moment if she’s a sex worker but reproach myself for making assumptions.
Back to the table, she pulls her stool closer to mine, parting her knees for a moment. She raises her glass. ‘Slàinte Mhath.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘In good health. It’s Gaelic.’
I take a sip of whisky. She swallows her cocktail in three gulps. Her eyes seem to light up.
‘You’re not a local, are you, Cyrus?’
‘No. I’m visiting.’
‘Alone?’
‘With a friend. I’m actually looking for someone. Finn Radford.’
‘Finn? Why?’
‘I hear he’s struggling.’
‘That’s one word for it,’ she says. ‘This time of day, he’ll be face down in a cot at the Fisherman’s Hostel. But give it a few hours and he’ll be drinking again.’
There is a poignancy in her tone – as though she remembers him as a different man.
‘Where is the Fisherman’s Hostel?’
‘Opposite the lifeboat station.’
I swallow my whisky, feeling the burn.
‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ asks Kellie. ‘We only just met.’ She runs her forefinger around the edge of her glass and licks it provocatively.
‘Next time,’ I say. ‘Nice chatting to you.’
‘Your loss,’ she shouts, as I push out of the door and get buffeted by a gust of wind that snaps at my trouser cuffs.
The lower floor of the hostel is an old storefront where the display windows have been sealed up and painted. The wooden building looks incongruous among the granite factories and workshops, most of them servicing the fishing industry. A brass call bell rests on the counter. I tap it twice and wait. Nobody answers. I hear a TV from somewhere along a corridor. Following the sound, I come to a lounge where two old guys are sitting in lumpy armchairs, one of them dozing and the other watching a nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough.
‘Have you seen Finn?’ I ask, making it sound like I’m expected.
‘Top of the stairs. First door on the right,’ says the TV watcher, without looking away from a hummingbird hovering beside a flower.
I follow his directions. Knuckles tap on the door. No answer. I knock more loudly. A moaned, ‘Piss off.’
I turn the handle.
Finn Radford is fully clothed, sprawled on a single bed. The room reeks of sweated alcohol, flatulence and stale cigarette smoke.
His eyes half open. ‘Who th’fuck are you?’
