After his heart attack, Heather had stayed on in Plymouth with her stepmother, who was kind enough, but not really good at parenting and pretty openly resented inheriting a daughter. Since neither of us had boundaries or curfews or rules, like other children, we became utterly inseparable.
Then she was sent off to board at thirteen, and our friendship briefly faltered. I remember Heather came back that first year with pink nails, and I teased her mercilessly until she took the polish off. And then I felt guilty, and stole money from my mum to buy some more pink nail polish so we could both have pink nails.
Heather helped me make sense of my parents. It was easy to understand Dad, he was a drunk. But Mum was confusing. It wasn’t just her obsession with bat-shit conspiracy theories, she lived a different reality from the one I could see in front of me, and it made me feel … unsure.
‘Your mum only told the teacher it was your fault you were late again because she doesn’t want them to call social services,’ she’d tell me. I was never sure what social services would do, but it always sounded infinitely scarier than having a dad who was sometimes very drunk. Besides, I had a roof over my head. Food on the table. I wasn’tneglected.
And when Heather took her report cards home and pinned them to the fridge, only to have them tidied away by her stepmother, I would celebrate her results with her. We were family. It was just her and me, plugging the gaps in each other’s lives wherever we could.
It didn’t matter how much her life changed, and the successes she made for herself, she always came back to me. And no wonder. I wasn’t going anywhere – literally or figuratively.
I think Heather should have come here. I think it might have connected her to her mother, and I wonder why she so abruptly bailed out of this gig. Was Cristian really the whole reason? It was so strangely out of character. Had I missed something?
I throw a stone out into the water and it makes a heavy, musical sound before it sinks to the invisible deep.
I have a moment of new regret that I may have taken that from Heather. It always feels like I am the one of us who needs shoringup – after all, I have the dreadful parents. But Heather is alone in a different way. I think back to our conversation at her house over a month ago now, when I watched her telling me about Cristian. The nervous hope on her face that this guy could be the one who would replace that unconditional love she so desperately missed.
I didn’t intervene because whenever I’d tried to in the past, Heather would get distant and withdrawn – and I’d made a decision to support her always. That way, whatever happened, she knew she could always come back. A bit like I think a parent should.
I think about calling her, but I know I cannot hear her voice right now.
Shaking off my thoughts, I pull myself up and take off my filthy sneakers, roll my trousers up and tiptoe to the water’s edge, standing just far enough back that the water needs to come to me.
‘That’s the wrong place to dive in,’ says a voice. It’s Bill.
‘Hi!’ I say, a little disappointed at the interruption.
‘I still haven’t had a chance to thank you.’ He looks ahead to the horizon on the loch. ‘For the other day.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ I say, not really wanting to talk about it with him. I already knew what he was going to say anyway.Sorry—
‘Sorry,’ he says.
‘Bill. It doesn’t matter,’ I say, shooting him a dismissive look.
‘You are really coming on,’ he says, after some time.
‘I’m feeling confident,’ I reply quickly.
‘It’s like you’re a whole new woman …’
‘Okay, okay,’ I say, crossing my arms. ‘I’m sorry about my shitty first week. But I’m on top of things now. I won’t let you or Irene down. I promise.’
He nods seriously, as though to say ‘I have no doubt’, then leans down to pick up a rock. He tries to skim it, but it only jumps twice. I remember again the conversation I overheard between him and Irene, and turn to him and smile.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Nothing. Just,’ I pick up a stone myself, and run my finger along the smooth oval edge, ‘thanks for backing me up.’
‘I don’t want you to fail,’ he says.
I sigh and look out to the water. The loch is spectacular – open, exposed and wild. ‘I think I might love it here,’ I say wistfully. I toss the stone forward into the lake. It skips once, twice, three, four, five times.
‘Most people who come to the west coast for work are running away or hiding from something, or both.’
‘Most people on the west coast, or most people here?’ I ask, looking across at him. ‘Roxy tells me this is the Last-Chance Saloon. Irene’s home for lost souls.’
Bill laughs. ‘Well, it’s true in a way, I suppose. She likes to help people who have nowhere else to go.’
