banked out to sea and glided high on its wide wings. ‘I’ve never seen such big gulls.’
‘We get all sorts here,’ he said. ‘That one’s a great black-backed gull. If you think he was big, you should see an albatross. They come inshore now and then.’
Kristen paused and breathed in the fresh sea air. ‘It’s so peaceful here. I can see why you came back. What on earth made you leave?’
‘I went to live in France for a while. Place called Le Val. An old farm in Normandy.’ He didn’t add that the facility he’d founded there, under his management, had operated as one of Europe’s key specialised training centres for tactical raid and hostage rescue teams. Certain aspects of his past, most of it in fact, were subjects he generally wouldn’t, couldn’t, discuss with people.
‘You certainly pick nice places to live.’ She pulled a face. ‘I live in Newbury. Hardly the most romantic spot on earth. So where’s home for you now?’
‘Wherever. Nothing permanent.’
‘A rolling stone.’
‘Not by choice,’ he replied. ‘That’s just the way it is.’
‘So where to after this?’
‘No plans. Sooner or later, I’ll move on. Don’t know where.’
They walked a little further. Kristen seemed about to say something, then reached for her bag. ‘Excuse me a moment. I really need to check my messages.’ She dug in the bag, and Ben got a glimpse of the small laptop inside.
‘You carry that thing around with you everywhere?’ he observed with a smile.
‘Never know when the muse might strike.’ She took out the slim leather pouch that she kept her notebook in and unzipped a little pocket on the front. Inside were two mobile phones. She took one out, gave it a quick check and then tutted to herself and shook her head as though disappointed. ‘Damn it,’ she muttered, zipping the phone back inside the pouch and replacing it in her bag.
‘Something important?’ Ben asked.
‘Oh, it’s just about my research,’ Kristen said quickly, and he thought there was a slight evasive tone in her voice, as well as a momentary nervousness in her expression. ‘Someone I was hoping to hear back from.’ She shrugged. ‘Never mind.’
‘Is that what brings you to Galway, research?’
She nodded. ‘I’ve been travelling around a few places, the last ten days. Killarney, Limerick, Athlone, all over really.’
‘Useful trip?’
‘Oh yes. Very much indeed. And in ways I couldn’t have imagined.’
‘I won’t ask.’
She smiled. ‘And I won’t tell. Trade secrets. Don’t take it personally.’
‘Never,’ he said.
The wind from the sea was rising. Ben looked at the sky. Those dark clouds were nearing ominously. ‘We might have to make a run for it. Weather’s coming in faster than I thought.’
‘Hardly feels like August, does it?’
‘Must be the global warming they keep promising us,’ he said.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘So what’s the book about? Or is that part of the trade secret?’
‘No, the book I can talk about. Historical stuff. A biography.’
‘Someone I might have heard of?’
‘Lady Elizabeth Stamford. Nineteenth-century diarist, novelist, poet, educator, considered one of the first feminists. I won’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of her.’
‘I can’t say I have,’ Ben said. ‘But from the name and the fact that you came here for your research, I’m guessing she was married to Lord Stamford, owner of the Glenfell Estate that covered about a million acres near Ballinasloe, just a few miles away.’
‘Ten out of ten. Nothing like local knowledge.’
‘More like local legend. You still hear the old story of the tyrannical English lord who went mad and burned his own house down with himself inside. But that doesn’t make me an expert. So Lady Stamford’s the subject of your book?’
‘Yeah … she is.’ She gave a non-committal kind of shrug.
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
She looked at him. ‘Don’t I? I suppose not. That’s because … well, the fact is that I don’t really know that I’ll be writing it any more. Something else has come along in the last couple of days that makes me think …’ Her voice trailed off and she frowned up at the clouds. They were directly overhead now and more threatening than ever.
‘Here it comes,’ Ben said. Moments later, the first heavy raindrops began to spatter down, quickly gathering force.
Kristen drew her fleece more tightly around her. ‘Christ. We’re going to get soaked.’
He glanced back over his shoulder. They’d walked quite a distance from the flat rock. ‘Listen, we’re closer to my place than we are to the guesthouse. If you want to shelter from the storm …’
‘Lead on,’ she said, nodding.
They ran. The rain was pelting down now, carried in gusts by the wind, as the path led them away from the pebbly beach and between the rocks to the cottage. Ben creaked open the gate in the little picket fence, and they hurried to the door. He unlocked it and showed her inside.
Kristen stood shivering and dripping on the bare floorboards. ‘I’m like a drowned rat.’ She took off her fleecy top, which was wet through. Her bare arms were mottled with cold.
‘Here,’ Ben said, pulling a wooden chair out from the table. He hung the fleece over the back of it. ‘This’ll dry off fine once I get the fire going.’ He’d prepared it earlier, split logs and kindling sticks on a bed of balled-up newspaper.
Kristen checked inside her bag. ‘Thank God, my stuff didn’t get wet.’ As she slung the bag over the back of the chair, Ben motioned towards the narrow wooden staircase. ‘You’d best get yourself dried off. There’s towels and a hair dryer in the bathroom.’
As Kristen trotted upstairs, he knelt by the fireplace and used his Zippo to light the paper and kindling. By the time she returned a few minutes later, her short hair frizzy from the dryer, he had a crackling blaze going and the cottage was already filling with a glow of warmth.
‘What a lovely little place,’ she said, now that she could admire it.
‘Back when I had the big house, this was just a derelict fisherman’s bothy, no more than four walls
