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RED JOE

I first saw the guy on Wednesday afternoon.

I was making my way from my cottage into the village—a slow, meandering walk that I took every day with Hiccup the dog—and the guy was walking up the hill as I was walking down.

He was in his mid-twenties, maybe, with a green beanie pulled down over his dark hair, a red jacket, black pants, and a bright orange backpack.

He clashed like a Liquorice Allsort, but it wasn’t just his clothes that made him stand out—it was the fact that he was a stranger.

Dauntless Island didn’t get many tourists—it was a four-hour boat ride from the mainland—and the few we got didn’t come in winter. I hoped for the guy’s sake that he’d packed some decent weather-resistant gear.

I’d been prepared to pass by with just a nod of acknowledgement when Hiccup, delighted to see a stranger, bounded up to the guy barking and bounced around him in excited circles.

“Hic!” I called to the black Lab. “Hiccup!”

Like Amy couldn’t have called the dog something that didn’t sound quite as stupid when I yelled it? My little sister was the worst.

“Hey,” the guy said to Hiccup, and reached out to pet her.

Hiccup hit the ground like one of those fainting goats, writhing in delight as the guy crouched to rub her belly.

I crossed over to them, an apology on my lips, and then the guy looked up.

He was cute. Cute as hell. He had wide brown eyes framed by black-rimmed glasses, a snub nose, and a generous mouth twitching into a grin.

He straightened again, a flush rising on his cheeks, and I wished that I’d picked today to shave instead of putting it off long enough that I looked like I’d been marooned for six months.

I also wished I’d actually showered and changed out of my work clothes before heading into the village.

“You’re camping?” I blurted, because apparently I’d lost the ability to start with an introduction like a normal person around the same time I’d lost my razor.

Not that I’d ever been much of a talker anyway.

I’d always preferred listening to talking, and the back and forth rhythms of a conversation had never come naturally to me.

I used to work hard at overcoming that, but that had slipped by the wayside lately.

Who did I even have to practice with these days except the dog?

“Yeah.” The guy flashed me a sunny smile that belied the grey clouds rolling in from the ocean. “Up near the lighthouse.”

I raised my eyebrows. He was going to freeze to death when the temperature dropped with the storm tonight. The views from the lighthouse were magnificent, but that side of the island wasn’t sheltered at all.

The guy looked at me expectantly, as though waiting for my response, but my warning about the cold was stuck somewhere in my throat, the words tangled like knotted fishing line. It didn’t help that the guy was so pretty I was having difficulty not staring at his mouth.

Hiccup was already bounding on again, eager to get to the village.

“Okay,” the guy said, his smile fading into an awkward grimace. “It was nice meeting you.”

I nodded.

The guy curled his fingers around the straps of his backpack. “Okay…”

“Joe,” I managed at last, holding my hand out. “Joe Nesmith.”

The guy’s smile returned as he shook my hand. “Eddie,” he said. “Eddie Hawthorne.”

My stomach sank.

I should have known the guy would be trouble.

* * *

“D id you hear the news?” Mavis Coldwell asked when I reached the village shop.

She learned over the counter, her large bosom resting on a stack of last month’s Australian Women’s Weekly , and didn’t wait for my reply.

“Young Harry Barnes said the fella he brought over from the mainland today is a Hawthorne. Can you imagine such a thing, Red Joe? A Hawthorne, on Dauntless, after all this time!”

She clicked her tongue.

“Probably just a tourist,” I said.

Young Harry Barnes, who was sixty-three this year, was the biggest gossip on Dauntless. He even eclipsed Mavis, whose small shop in the main street, which also doubled as the post office, was the heartbeat of the island.

“Oh, it’s trouble alright.” Mavis’s voice held a note of warning, but her eyes shone with delight. “Nothing good can come of it. You mark my words, Red Joe! Mark my words!”

I hummed and nodded as I waited for Mavis to pack up my order.

I walked into the village every day, but usually just to stretch my legs and give Hiccup a run.

Wednesdays were grocery days, when—weather permitting—Young Harry Barnes did a run to the mainland and restocked Mavis’s inventory.

Mavis generally didn’t have the new stock out until Thursday morning, but she made an exception for me because Amy had worked at the shop before going away to the mainland for school.

And because I was a Nesmith, and that meant something on Dauntless Island.

After collecting my order, Hiccup and I walked down the main street.

It was lined with sandstone cottages and ended at the harbour wall in a cluster of heritage buildings, including the church, the local museum, and the joint tourist information centre and souvenir shop.

The tourist information centre was closed and wouldn’t re-open until summer.

There were a few bed and breakfasts as well, mostly people’s houses, but there were no tourists staying in them right now.

Dauntless was a ghost town in the colder months, and I preferred it that way.

Hiccup and I walked down to the statue of Josiah Nesmith that marked the end of the street, and I stared out past the harbour wall. The jetty jutted into the water, pointing south.

Hiccup sniffed around the bronze statue for a while. Josiah Nesmith stood on a plinth, his face pockmarked with verdigris, and stared imperiously over the water as though he was personally daring the British Navy to come for him. If so, he was facing the wrong way.

The plaque on the plinth was weathered and difficult to read, but I knew the words by heart:

Erected in commemoration of Josiah Nesmith, the hero who delivered the people of Dauntless Island from the tyrant George Hawthorne.

I nudged Hiccup away with my knee when she looked like she was considering pissing on the plinth, and then we headed back up the street and up the long, winding track towards home.

* * *

I made baked beans on toast for dinner and ate them in front of the TV while Hiccup drooled hopefully on my socks.

The rain hit halfway through the news, and the satellite reception grew choppy.

I turned the TV off when the picture fractured and froze into pixels.

I spared a thought for Eddie Hawthorne camping out in this weather.

The lights flickered as the rain picked up, but the power stayed on.

One benefit of being the lighthouse keeper was that the cottage was on the same self-contained grid as the lighthouse itself—an industrial solar installation with a diesel backup.

I had the most reliable electricity on the island, and I didn’t have to pay a cent for it.

I did my rounds at nine p.m., tugging on my oilskin coat to traverse the yard between my cottage and the lighthouse.

Hiccup, who usually came with me into the yard, very sensibly waited inside.

I pushed open the lighthouse door and climbed the stairs to the lantern room out of habit more than anything else—if the light was out, I would have spotted it the moment I left the cottage—then noted the time on the log and returned to the cottage.

Would be nice, I thought sometimes, to have someone to share these quiet evenings with.

I stayed up for another hour or so, listening to a bit of back and forth on the marine radio in the kitchen, and then went to bed.

I lay awake for a long while, Hiccup a warm weight on my feet, as the storm broke and the lightning flashed all around.

* * *

I n the morning, I saw Eddie Hawthorne again.

At first he was just a small red speck on the steep seaward side of the point, but he was clearly making his way up towards the lighthouse.

Hiccup took a while to notice him—she was distracted by a grasshopper—but when she did, she let out a bark of delight and bounded down the hill towards him.

I snorted at her and kept working in the garden.

The vegetable garden had been Amy’s pride and joy, and it was in a pretty sorry state.

If I couldn’t get anything to grow in it before Amy returned for the summer, at least I could dig the weeds out, right?

But the internet had promised me I could grow carrots and onions and beans in winter, so I was going to try that.

Better than paying island prices for frozen supermarket vegetables from the mainland.

“Hi,” said a voice from behind me—just when I had almost forgotten he’d been climbing the hill. “So, you actually live at the lighthouse? That’s amazing.”

I stood up and turned around, brushing my dirty hands on my pants. “Yeah. You go okay in the storm last night?”

Eddie didn’t look like a drowned rat.

“I don’t think I slept a wink,” he said, and I noticed the dark smudges under his eyes.

They didn’t detract from his smile though, which was as brilliant as I remembered and did hopeful twisty things to my stomach that I didn’t want to dwell on.

“But it turns out my tent is well worth what I paid for it. Not even a leak!”

“That’s good.” The words came easier today, like water trickling from a rusty tap: I’d struggled to turn it yesterday because it had been a while, but today it shifted without much trouble.

Eddie stretched, his jacket and shirt riding up to reveal a sliver of skin. “Wow. This view is incredible.”

“Yeah,” I said, tearing my gaze away from Eddie’s abdomen.