‘By the time we’d managed to find each other again it felt like she was already leaving. But at least I feel like this time it wasn’t goodbye forever. And besides, we have so much to be happy about, don’t we?’
I still have so many fears for the baby, for myself, for this island and its islanders. Things are still so uncertain, but Jack is right too. Right now, I don’t want to let worries or sadness encroach on our happiness. It might not be a cheering, shouting, dancing kind of happiness, instead it drapes itself over us like a blanket or a purring cat. For a moment we sit quietly side by side, letting it warm us. The worries and fears will still be there tomorrow. For now, let us have this.
Chapter 45
Lorna
We may have been gone for three weeks but the flat smells stale and empty when we finally arrive home, abandoning our suitcases in the hallway. I’m dazed from the long trip and the journey on the underground that felt like an assault on the senses after the quiet of the island. Was the underground always so hot and crowded? Did the DLR always rattle like a runaway carriage?
It’s late morning but all I want to do is sleep. Last night on the sleeper train I lay awake in the narrow bed. At the start of our trip I counted down the days until I could get back to London, but last night I just couldn’t stop thinking about everything I’d left behind on the island. I’d thought that Ella had been sleeping but at one point I heard a noise from the top bunk that could have been either a cough or a sob. I spoke her name quietly into the darkness but received no reply.
‘I’m going to bed,’ Ella says now, carrying her suitcase along the tight corridor towards her bedroom.
Fatigue tugs at my limbs but instead of heading straight to my room I wander into the kitchen. The plates from the dinner we ate before heading to Euston to catch the sleeper train are still neatly stacked on the drying rack. That dinner feels much longer than three weeks ago and I find I can’t remember what we ate that night. I do remember how I felt though, anxiety and apprehension buzzing through my veins like too much caffeine. How strange to think that just three weeks ago I’d never met Alice or Molly, and hadn’t seen my brother in twenty-two years. I hadn’t seen Sarah since I was a child and I’d never met the other islanders. I’d never met Tess or Joy, Brenda, Morag or Kerstin. I’d never met Mallachy.
In one of the flats above a dog barks and a muffled yell reaches me through the floorboards. Outside, I can hear the rattle of cars and buses on the main road that loops around the edge of the Isle of Dogs. I scoop the post from the doormat (takeaway leaflets and more bills) and head to my room where I lie down heavily on the bed. Usually this room feels so familiar that I don’t reallyseeit. It just is. But now it’s as though I am seeing my surroundings for what they are, devoid of the usual familiarity that blurs them into the background. For a second, this is just a house, not a home. A flat in a block filled with other flats, lives I know nothing about, strangers living on top of one another. My room is just a room, filled with the debris of a life. And then I fall asleep. I dream of the ocean. This time though, I am not looking out at it, wishing myselfon the mainland. Instead I am swimming in it, the cold water surrounding me and making my skin tingle.
Our second evening back in the flat, Cheryl comes over for dinner. I hug her tightly in the doorway. I’ve never been so happy to see my friend. Or so sad either. As I step away I rub my eyes. I give her the box of shortbread I bought for her at Fort William and we sit down at the kitchen table, the same table we’ve sat at together countless times. But this time’s different. Now, everything has changed.
‘I still can’t believe you’re leaving.’
‘Me neither. It’ll be so strange.’
But I think maybe she’s just being kind. There’s an even greater bounce to her than usual, an ease and lightness as though she is protected by a waterproof layer and any stress is now just rolling off her like droplets of rain. She seems excited and I wonder for how long she and Mike have needed this change.
Over dinner (a cobbled-together meal that makes me miss the fresh vegetables and perfectly cooked meat we ate at Hilly Farm), Ella tells Cheryl animatedly about our time on the island. She tells her about Molly and Olive, about the puffins and the boat trip with Mallachy, and about her birthday party. Hers might be an edited description of our trip away, missing out the arguments, the running away and all the tension, but I still smile to hear her tell it.
‘It sounds like you had a wonderful time.’
‘I did,’ Ella replies.
Once Ella has gone to bed Cheryl and I open a bottle of wine and retreat to the living room, sitting with our legs up beneath us on the sofa.
‘So how was it really?’
How to possibly condense everything that’s happened over the past couple of weeks into a few phrases? In some ways, it feels as though the past three weeks never happened. Returning to our flat, nothing has changed. And yet somehow everything has too.
‘Itwaswonderful. But also awful. And painful. And confusing. And hard, really hard. But yes, at times it was wonderful.’
And so I tell her some of it, as much of it as I can manage to form into words. My brother’s coldness, our big argument at our childhood home, our parents’ funeral and the day Ella and Molly escaped to Caora Island and I feared I’d lost my daughter for good.
‘God, that must have been so bloody frightening.’
‘It was.’
I also tell her about Alice, about her optimism and vibrant energy.
‘You’d like her, Cheryl, I think.’
And then I tell her more about Mallachy, my cheeks growing warm as I share a little of our afternoons, of our hours spent in his studio.
‘You really liked him, didn’t you?’ she says.
I run a hand through my hair.
‘Does it really matter? He’s there, I’m here.’
‘Of course it matters! Falling in love always matters.’
