The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce

Author:Graham Joyce [Joyce, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-53864-0
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

LATER, IN THE cooler evening, the ladybugs began to subside. After I’d finished work I made my way up to the same dark place on the beach. After my encounter with Colin I didn’t want to go but I’d arranged to meet Terri there again before Colin had intercepted me. I assumed she knew Colin was back on the scene, and I was quite prepared for her not to turn up. But when I got there she was waiting with a blanket and a couple of beers. She did of course know that he was around, but she was very surprised that I’d seen him that day.

“What’s he want with you?”

“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”

She found that amusing. “Jeez!”

“Maybe we should leave it. Are you sure he’s not following you?”

“Not tonight. I know exactly where he is tonight. Cards club. Once a month to piss his money away. That’s why he’s back. He ain’t here to see me.”

I looked back up the beach. “I don’t know about this.”

“It’s all right. I’m sure. Look at you. You got the jitters now, haven’t you?”

I felt trapped. After what had happened between us I was afraid she might think I was drawing back from her. We walked on a little way and then she spread the blanket on the sand and popped open a beer. The luminous ripples of the waves did nothing to calm my nerves.

“Relax, will you?”

The sea was blue-black, calm with a light, foamy tide. What had seemed like a beach in paradise a few nights ago now seemed to have a smoky edge. The phosphorescence in the waves was still at large, but now it had a wormy quality. But it wasn’t the beach that had changed.

Terri would talk about other workers on the resort in quite brutal terms. Somehow she got onto the subject of Nikki. She called her a “half-wog.”

“Stop,” I said, “stop. You know what? Nikki is amazing.”

“You think,” she said drily.

“Yes, I do. She’s become a good friend. The only friend I do have here, not counting you.” That last phrase came out like an afterthought.

“How good a friend is she, then?”

I knew exactly what she hinted at, but I said, “How do you mean?”

“Never mind. What about Colin? Sounds like he’s your big buddy now.”

I ignored that. Whatever relationship I had with Terri, I wasn’t going to allow her to slag off Nikki. Already the evening wasn’t playing out in the expected way, so I tried to change the subject.

I took my wallet out of my pocket and showed her the photograph of my biological father. I’ve no idea why. It wasn’t something I went around discussing freely with anyone. In fact it was a kind of secret. Perhaps I’d made the basic error of thinking that emotional intimacy automatically follows sexually intimacy. I told her I had this idea that my biological father was always close. That he was somehow here for me.

It now sounds an impossibly naïve thing to say.

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