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‘Why would anyone want to bury people in big stone holes all the way out here when they could just put them in the churchyard? There was a nice one back in the town.’
This promised to be good. Aleksey turned to Ben and studied him for a moment before pointing out, ‘They are Neolithic.’
‘Huh. I met one of those once.’
Even better. ‘Really? When?’
‘At Martin’s place, before they moved to the chapel. This old guy said he’d been born aNeolithic, but he was trying out the prayer group to see if it suited him more.’
Aleksey schooled his expression. ‘PossiblyMethodist?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ Suddenly he sat up straighter. ‘What if we’ve got those things—burial chambers—on La Luz?’
‘Light Island. I am renaming our island, I have decided.’
‘Can you do that?’
Aleksey poked him in the side. ‘You can. You are good at renaming things.’
‘Okay, Light Island it is then. But wouldn’t it be cool if we found standing stones?’ He flung himself back on the grass and pillowed his head on folded arms. ‘And alighthouse. I mean…bloody hell.’
Aleksey lay back too and mirrored Ben’s position. Could you die from happiness?
‘I concur entirely.Bloody hell.’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Three
They flew back as scheduled and took off from Tre Huw, which Hugh Town was mostly called by the locals, to the west into the prevailing headwind, away from their destination, to circle some distance out to sea before heading east to the mainland. When he realised what was happening, Aleksey released his seatbelt and stretched over Ben to stare out of his window. Ben eased back to give him more room. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to see…?’
Aleksey nodded.
They peered out together.
‘Is that…?’
‘I am not sure. It is too close to—’
Suddenly, a projectile hit his back from across the aisle. He swivelled and Squeezy was hooking his thumb at his own window.
Aleksey didn’t hesitate. He levered himself out of his tiny seat and was across the gap, leaning over Tim and gazing out of that window before Ben could stop him.
He got a tiny glimpse of a jewel of green set in brilliant blue with little splashes of white where Atlantic rollers, broken for the first time since they had parted from American shores, smashed against the western cliffs. He saw yellow. A beach perhaps, or was it the brilliance of flowers and blossom in paradise?
He took his scolding from the cabin crew and returned to his seat.
Ben raised an eyebrow enquiringly.
Aleksey closed his eyes to fix the sight forever in his mind. Ben nudged him for some response, and he murmured for him alone, ‘It was the colour of your eyes, Ben. It was Light Island.’ After a moment, he added, ‘And I take my life’s illumination to it.’
He fell asleep after this, so didn’t have to pass this entirely uncharacteristically romantic comment off as the result of airsickness or altitude as he might once have done. Aleksey Rider-Mikkelsen could say any damn romantic thing he wanted to. Hadn’t that been what it was all for?
He slept in the car back to the house, too. He stayed up long enough to see Molly and Ben racing their boats, to thank Sarah with a scarf he had bought for her, its blue, green and yellow a reminder of the luminescent beauty of that one fleeting glance, and to take some Scilly shortbread to Enid, but then he was entirely done.
Even the hot tub didn’t tempt him. Ben came in when he had shut the house down and handed him a cup of tea while he undressed. Aleksey was too weary to sit up and drink it. Ben perched naked alongside him while he brushed his teeth, and with his free hand began to comb through Aleksey’s hair. ‘You’re just over-excited.’
Aleksey smiled faintly at the attempted humour and murmured reluctantly, ‘I forget, Ben. Cramped in a small plane, walking, standing… One minute I am completely fine but then—’
