Instead I’m left alone, to feel such deep guilt about everything, it’s unbearable.
I pick up the keys to the SUV. Once I’m out of the driveway I pause for a moment, wondering where to go, before turning down the road towards Skye and Portree.
I switch off the stereo and roll down the windows as I drive, and put my right arm out the window to feel the cool air rushing between my fingers. The roads are quiet, even though it’s mid-morning. When I cross the bridge onto the Isle of Skye, the spectacular view makes my heart lurch.
Bright-green fields rise out of the pebbled, craggy shore. Sheep grazing too close to the road take off up the rising hills as the sound of my car nears.
James once told me the name was Norse:Skimeaning cloud andEymeaning Island. Cloud Island, owing to the mist that often clings to its saw-toothed mountains. When I came here with James the first time, that certainly fitted, but today everything is that heart-lifting, soul-cleansing summer blue. The blue of joy and hope. Sunshine and laughter.
In Portree I make my way to the edge of the pier with an arm full of newspaper-wrapped, piping-hot fish and chips, which I eat withunbridled pleasure and not a single ounce of regret – the greasy, salty fat running freely down my fingers, the cold can of Coke washing it down with fizzy sweetness. I’m sure Dad’s chips never tasted like this.
I toss my leftovers to the gulls, watching them clamour and fight mid-air, as I throw each handful higher.
I look down into the water as it laps against the pier, the same way it did on that first trip with James.
Would it be possible to come clean? I examine the outcomes over and over again in my head. The sound of the words ‘I did something really stupid’ forming in my mouth as I look at his face. I try to picture James smiling and saying he understands, as he vows to work through it with me, but it feels a ridiculous fantasy.
Heather, too – I imagine telling her. The story I had told myself about coming to Scotland, pretending to be her, and how it would all end up as a great big joke that we would giggle about, over a beer, stopped sounding convincing a long time ago. Heather was never going to take this whole thing on the chin. She’d be devastated that I lied, and heartbroken that I would be so reckless.
I pull myself up from the pier and decide to take a walk along the coast. I pass a little store near to the café we visited last time, and I see hiking boots in the window. Why not? I have all this cash now, with nothing to spend it on.
A few minutes later I’m lacing up my £100 tan hiking boots and tossing my old trainers in the nearest dustbin. I may as well spend my hard-earned cash on something useful.
I spot a sign that gives me the option to climb ‘The Lump’ or take the Scorrybreac circuit path. Three kilometres – God knows how long that will take. The sun is high in the sky now and the air is getting hot.
All this worrying about what to do with James is wasted, I tell myself as I meander along the tarmac path by the wooded shore. It’s over, and he’ll survive, move on. It may have felt like a summer romance, but in reality we were together for under a week. After a few minutes I stop and look back towards Portree harbour, which is sparkling in the sunlight. There’s a stone tower peeking out of thewoods, which I seem to remember someone telling me was a sign for ships that there was medical assistance in the town.
I want to speak to Heather, who arrived back in London yesterday. We have been speaking every couple of days and I have made a firm decision to keep everything I’ve done up here at Loch Dorn quiet until I am sitting with her, face-to-face. I have the feeling she has something she needs to get off her chest as well, and so our conversations are future-facing and mostly bright, if a little flat. Neither of us wants to engage fully until we are ready.
I’ll come see you soon, I’d said in my last text.
After this bloody wine-night. My plan is to put on the best Wine Society Highland Fling the west coast has ever seen. I want to recover some of the losses I helped to create with that shitty review, but I also want to prove something to myself, I guess. I may not be the best wine expert in Scotland, but I know how to show people a good time.
I want to do the wine-night, then be gone. Perhaps I should leave directly afterwards? I could book a car back to Inverness, and then fly to London. Perhaps I could leave a little note on the bar counter for Bill and Irene. Something that says:Family crisis to attend to – so sorry to dash off a little earlier than intended. Yes, that feels right. I’d be leaving, hopefully, on a high, and only running out on the last couple of weeks of the high season. They can manage without me.
The path passes a little boathouse and a sign that readsUrras Clann MhicNeacail(Gaelic, I guess), and I wonder about the history of this edge of the island: the bloody clan battles on the foreshore, the harsh winters, the warm fires and whisky. And there I am, thinking of James again, as the path turns to gravel and begins to ascend to a little bench, with glorious views of the hills across the loch. I sit for a while, staring out, feeling a deep aching in my heart.
And now I cry. At first it’s a few tears that slip out and roll gently down my cheeks, but after a few moments it becomes a deep, visceral wail. A cathartic exorcism of grief and anger and self-loathing. I look down at my hands, nails bitten to the quick. And I bury my face in my hands, switching between feeling fascinated by how much liquid my eyes can produce and wondering if there is any wayback to the place where I made my choices – but this time I make them right.
And then I think of all the things I would have missed out on, if I had.
I want to stay. Who knew that coming here, for little more than the sake of a yarn at the pub, would end up touching me in the heart this way? This ramshackle family hotel, which was trying so desperately to be grander and more magnificent than it was. This imperfect place, filled with imperfect people, all muddling along together with their ridiculous flaws and gigantic hearts. This place. I want to stay, desperately, and help rebuild it. And I want Roxy to be the youngest sommelier in the country. I want to sit on the stainless-steel counter with James and Anis and plan menus. I want James to be the head chef, making real, good food from the heart. Food that people are not intimidated by, but comforted and delighted by.
And as James comes to mind, he arrives in full Technicolor, blinding my senses to anything but the pain in my heart.
But pain – even the worst heartbreak – can never be felt at its most intense for too long. There’s something in us that wants to survive. Finally the tears start to slow, and I let the sun dry my cheeks.
33.
As I pull into Loch Dorn and back into mobile coverage, my phone springs to life with three missed calls. It’s Tim. What does he want? Just as I ponder ignoring it, it rings again.
‘What’s going on?’ I say tightly.
‘Birdy!’ he practically yells down the phone. He must be pissed.
‘Three missed calls? It’s the wrong time of the day for a booty call.’
‘Yeah, I wanted to find out if you know where we can get a phone charger around here, but we asked reception.’
