Read Blood, Salt, Water for Free Online Page B

yes. ‘Aye.’
    Three yellow lighters.
    Other coloured lighters in the box, green and blue, red ones, purple ones, but the guy chose all yellow for him.
    ‘Nine quid.’
    Iain looked at the tobacco pouch, glinting in a cellophane envelope. Last time he smoked was with her in Glasgow, a thin woman.
    The man smiled and said, ‘You haven’t smoked for a while, pal? Dear now, innit?’
    But Iain was with the thin woman a long time ago, in Glasgow, who asked him to hold her throat and pretend to strangle her while they were having sex. Iain was scared of her and what she might make him do. Her hair smelled stale. She had a stain on her blouse, green, washed-in, like she’d vomited bile and washed it and it hadn’t come out. He tried to get away from her but she followed him to the pub. You look like a movie star.
    ‘Pal? Nine quid.’
    Iain was staring at the counter, thinking about a bloody curlicue vessel snaking across the white of her eye. The memory brought a bubble of sadness up from deep in his gut. Why did she go with them to the boat? If she’d screamed in the house someone might have called the cops and stopped it. But then the debt wouldn’t be paid, so he didn’t know what to hope for—
    ‘Buddy?’ The shopkeeper had seen his confusion and reached out tenderly. ‘You OK?’
    Iain was ashamed. He slapped a hand over his eyes, rubbing hard. He put a tenner down on the counter and picked up the things, tucking them into different pockets, the pouch and papers and yellow yellow yellow lighters.
    Holding the change so tight that the coins dug into his palm, Iain reached for the door. Susan Grierson was still there, waiting on the pavement, hopeful as a wayward teenager outside an off-sales. She watched his face as he came out and she sighed.
    ‘Gosh, Iain,’ she said, ‘you looked so much like your mother just then.’
    He stepped heavily down into the street. He wasn’t getting his hole off her then. His mistake. He was half relieved. Too much had happened today already. His chest tightened.
    They walked up the road, she a half-step ahead, leading him.
    ‘So, Sheila died?’ She was nodding. ‘Mum told me.’
    Sheila. Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila Sheila. Today was a wall of Sheila.
    ‘While ago, aye,’ he said. ‘Eight, maybe nine year ago?’
    ‘Gosh.’ She let off a huff of dismay, politeness. ‘I’m so sorry. It was a brain haemorrhage, of course. It was a danger she lived with every day.’ Susan was talking in a sort of churchy voice, like she was reading at Sheila’s funeral or something. ‘She was astonishingly brave, leading an independent life with that degree of brain damage. I think the doctors were amazed she could even walk.’
    Iain stopped walking. Brain damage? The words clattered around his mind. Sheila had brain damage?
    Susan Grierson was looking at him as if everyone in the world knew. Iain didn’t know. It was obvious, now he thought about it. Sheila had a home help and a social worker to manage her money for her. He always thought she got support because he was so much trouble. He thought her respite weekends were giving her a break from him.
    He looked at Susan. ‘Sheila had brain damage?’
    She nodded. She seemed to understand that he didn’t know. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’
    Did they? Her reluctance to talk and angry-for-no-reason moods. No one ever told him. Did they tell him? He might have been told in a couched way, in a kind way, and misunderstood.
    Miss Grierson talked on about Sheila at school and what a good sailor she was and the dances they went to, in all the great houses, when they were girls.
    They were walking along by a tall hedge when she arrived at Sheila having Iain: ‘. . . young when she had you. I never had children.’ She gave him a glancing blow of a look, a demand for pity.
    It wasn’t a pity. She wouldn’t have thought it was if she had stayed and knew what Iain had put Sheila through. The shame and the worry. Prison visits and