A woman standing at the railing next to me tutted at my tapping fingers. Her eyes dragged from my tattooed hands, up my inked forearms and biceps that bulged in my black T-shirt. I wondered what exactly made her take a smart sidestep away from me, her mouth sewn shut. The new neck tattoo that I needed to remember to moisturise tonight or it would be an itchy bitch in the morning, or the look on my face that suggested that if she had something to say about my nervous tapping, she could fucking well say it?
Maybe it was my brown skin. The last leg of my travels had been two weeks spent in India. At first, being surrounded by people who looked like me was jarring. Maybe I’d gotten too used to it though. I needed to reacclimatise to me, my brother, and Errol being the darkest skinned people on the island, to those looks we got when we walked shoulder to shoulder. To the side eye I got when alone.
I took a deep breath, attempting to breath out the annoyance pounding through me. I wasn’t actually an arsehole, despite what my appearance and attitude might suggest. I just didn’t have patience for people judging me for my tattoos or habitual scowl or my heritage.
That was another great thing about cities; the people there didn’t give a shit. They left me alone, and I left them alone. Perfect.
I bit my lip. Being back on the island meant enduring opinions. Opinions from people I loved. Who loved me. Who had my best interests at heart.
Not a mistake.
I turned away from the judgemental hag and gazed over to where the island’s only road stretched up through the mountains on the other side of the loch. It led eventually to Oscar’s farm. I’d have to visit him soon; spend time with another person on the island who wasn’t interested in mystical creature bullshit.
Before I reached Oscar’s farm, I’d stroll past The Houses. The collection of fancy residencies probably had some wanky name bestowed by the developer. Everyone on the island detested him on principle for using even one square inch of their perfect island to build new homes.
They seemed to conveniently forget that their homes had to have been built at some point, but whatever.
Most of the islanders hated The Houses too. Called them ugly. Elitist. Half of them were owned by holiday makers, which automatically made them Residences Of Evil. They were completely different to the pokey cottages in the village. I’d only been inside one once as part of a weird dare I couldn’t remember the exact details of but which involved stealing a loo roll to see if fancy people wiped their arses the same way us normals did, but there were no small rooms or low ceilings. Huge glass windows looked out over the sea. The light fixtures were so far away it felt logical rather than nerdy to wonder how anyone cleaned them.
I didn’t hate The Houses. I loved them. In idle fantasies I made sure never to say aloud because Joshua would likely crumple under the weight of his sadness, I imagined living in one of them. These daydreams ignored the fact that I could never afford one of those homes on a baker’s salary. Especially not a baker who’d spent the last few months spending his savings on a trip across Europe and Asia.
In one of The Houses, I’d wake up to bright sunshine pouring through the floor to ceiling windows. I’d stretch out across a bed I couldn’t touch the edges of, my skin surfing atop sheets with a thread count I didn’t know the significance of but which felt like silk. I’d drink a coffee in a vaulted living room, bake bread in a huge kitchen with every appliance I could imagine and there would be all the space I ever wanted.
I was so lost in imagining another life where I was some rich boy who could afford to luxuriate around in bed in the morningrather than waking up at the butt crack of dawn to get the first loaves of bread in the oven at the bakery, that I didn’t look back at the group on the jetty until they were a whole lot fucking closer.
My heart spasmed, like a bird caught in a cage. As soon as I stepped onto Errol’s boat and it left mainland Scotland returning to the island had been inevitable, but until the faces of my loved ones came into focus, not returning felt like more of a possibility. I was a good swimmer, could have thrown myself over the railing during the voyage and made it back to the mainland in one piece.
The island had been far away, the welcoming party on the jetty a blurred mass. Now it was smiling faces. Faces who loved me and wanted me home and would welcome me back with open arms. Faces of people who would never want me to leave again.
Not a mistake. Not a mistake. Not a mistake.
I raised the hand not tapping frantically on the rail to wave at my parents. Mum dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, her blonde hair pulled into a neat bun. Dad was wearing his brewery apron, which meant he’d come to welcome me back to the island straight from work. He was a whole head taller than Mum, which meant he came to the middle of my chest. His bald scalp shone bright white in the sun and one of his strong hands rose to answer my wave.
Others milled around them, familiar and unfamiliar faces. One snagged my interest.
No. Coming back here couldn’t be a mistake. The way my heart trampolined in my chest like it wanted to break free of the confines of bone and sinew to close the dwindling distance between me and my twin a few seconds sooner was evidence that despite all my misgivings – of which Joshua featured in a few – coming back to the island was my only real option. How could I stay away for too long, when the other half of my soul lived here?
It seemed Joshua’s heart was doing some serious almost leaping from his chest too. Bonnie had one arm slung around his shoulders, the other hooked into the crook of his elbow. Whereas I would plunge into the choppy water around Errol’s boat if I jumped to get closer to Joshua, he had his weird beastie mojo going on. He could easily clear the distance between us. I reckoned Bonnie’s arms around him were all that stopped him from launching himself off the jetty and exposing his secret powers to the unsuspecting humans around us.
Joshua might have restrained himself from bouncing across the sea at the boat, but he could be stopped no longer when we butted gently into the jetty. Before Errol had laid down the gangplank, Joshua grabbed onto the railing and leapt aboard in a move that just about looked human.
For a second, we stared at one another. Then we crashed into each other’s arms.
It was still a shock, even all these years since he’d been changed, to wrap my arms around my brother and feel corresponding strength answering back. He’d always been smaller than me, but that didn’t matter if you had moon juice running through your veins.
Joshua had always been pleased that Bonnie biting him had made him my physical match. I’d not voiced how I’d liked being his protector.
Despite the strength of his arms, I bent to curl myself around him. My nose wasn’t as sensitive as his, but I could smell sweet whisky in his silky black hair and that wonderful warmth I couldn’t find anywhere than on my brother’s skin.
‘Cob.’ His voice was thick with tears. ‘I missed you so damn much.’
I closed my eyes, my face screwed up with emotion. Some of it sadness, some it something else.
Except for during our phone calls, I’d not been called Cob in months. The nickname settled over me like an ill-fitting jumper. It pinched in all the wrong places. But Cob was my name on the island. Always had been, always would be.
No way out.
I shook my head to dislodge the weird fatalistic thought and concentrated on hugging my brother. A nickname I wished I could shed was a small price to pay for being with the people I loved.
