The words jolt me and I take a deep sip of wine. Love? It seems an absurd thought. And yet … I still remember how familiar he seemed the first time I turned up at his house and found myself looking into his bright green eyes. How, in a short space of time he managed to encourage me to pick up a paintbrush once more, something I wasn’t sure I’d ever do again. And I remember the sound of his voice reaching me across the water as the ferry pulled away and how it broke something inside of me.
But I also think about Alice, her surprising kindness towards me and the connection that I felt between us after just a few days. Sarah, with whom I managed to reconnect after all these years. Her parents, who made me feel loved as a child and have that same power still. Molly, a teenager I now feel proud to call my niece. Morag, the old woman who drinks whisky and does yoga and who made me laugh. Brenda, Kerstin, Emma and Duncan, Tess, Joy, baby Harry … Even the island itself felt different eventually. By the end of the stay I was looking at it in a new way, seeing the wildflowers and the beach and the towering majesty of the mountain for what they really are. Beautiful.
‘I don’t think it’s just Mallachy I fell for.’
We look at each other and I know that right now, she can tell exactly how I’m feeling. Because she’s my closest friend.
‘So, what are you going to do?’ she asks.
I let out a deep breath, looking around the small living room in the flat I’ve called home for more than ten years.
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
Chapter 46
One week later
Alice
‘So, what are we going to do?’
Brenda is the first to ask the question that’s been in my mind all throughout the meeting with the councillors from the mainland. The meeting is now over and we’ve shown them to the B&B where they’re staying tonight before catching tomorrow’s ferry. Now the governors and all the island parents are back in the community hall, sitting on a cluster of chairs, abandoned tea things scattered on a table in the middle. Everyone slumps dejectedly in their chairs, looking down or out the window, seemingly reluctant to meet one another’s eyes. There’s silence, apart from the sound of Harry letting out a gurgle on Tess’s lap. I glance around, waiting for someone to say something. Well, if no one else is going to say it, then I will.
‘You heard what they said, there’s nothing we can do. Without a headteacher, the school is finished.’
I don’t know how I expected the meeting to go. I suppose I thought they’d have a solution. Maybe they’d managed to recruit someone themselves, a teacher from one of the nearer mainland towns who wants a slower pace of life and the chance to have more freedom in a smaller school. I think I was hoping for a miracle. Before the meeting, the prospect of the school closing was a looming threat, but it felt like a distant one. Now, it has become unquestionably real. The councillors seemed understanding, but made it clear that there was little they could do.
‘This is always the challenge of this kind of life,’ said one of them. ‘We can’t force people to live and work here. An island community is a fragile one, it’s just the way it goes. Either you have not enough young people moving in and an ageing population, or you hit a problem like this where you just can’t recruit people for the key roles an island needs filled in order to survive.’
‘So, we’re just giving up?’ says Brenda.
I look around the room again. The faces are sombre. Sarah looks up now, glancing at me and then around the room in turn.
‘I feel I should say something,’ she says, her voice strained. ‘Ben and I have decided to try to sell our croft. We’re looking for somewhere near his parents on the mainland. It’s just too much having all this uncertainty for Alfie. It would be different if he was at secondary school already like Olive, but I just wouldn’t feel like I was doing my job as a parent if I stayed not knowing if there’s going to be a school for him in a few months’ time.’
‘But you were supposed to help with admin at the school in the new term!’ I hear the words leaving my mouth, high with panic. Sarah looks down, not meeting my eye.
‘I know. I’m so sorry. But as parents, I hope you all understand.’
Ben reaches for her hand. I know that she’s only doing what’s best for her family, and I’m sure it wasn’t an easy choice, but it’s suddenly hard to look at her. Everything is falling rapidly apart. I’m not sure how I can possibly get through the coming months and all the uncertainty they hold without my friend by my side.
I notice a shuffling on the other side of the room.
‘I didn’t know when to tell you all, but I guess now’s the time,’ says Emma. ‘Duncan and I have actually been thinking the same thing. It’s just too much of a risk staying here with no prospects for the school.’
‘But what about the brewery?’ asks Pat Campbell. ‘You’ve run that place for years, and that stuff’s the pride of the island.’
Duncan shakes his head sadly.
‘George says he’d like to continue running the place, but if I’m completely honest I don’t think he can do it on his own.’
Silence settles again as we contemplate another part of the island closing down. I look at Sarah and Emma, trying to imagine island life without them. Now, we see one another several times a week, sometimes more. Without them there will be two more empty mats in my yoga class. It suddenly hits me that with Sarah moving to be closer to Ben’s parents, poor Molly will be losing her best friend. Olive will have to move schools, so Molly won’t even see her during the week. In one week, Molly has lost both Ella and Olive.
Glancing around the room, there’s one person who’s missing. I haven’t seen Jean since the party and since Lorna’s revelation about the past. I tried to visit her this morning but Christopher said she was sleeping. I wondered whether she was too embarrassed to see me, assuming that Lorna must have told me the whole story. I still don’t know how I feel about it. It’s uncomfortable to think about my friend making such a huge mistake, especially when I think about Molly and how I entrusted Jean with my daughter when I sent her to school every day. I feel angry for Lorna, and for Jack too, wondering how their history might have been different if an adult had stepped in or at least asked harder, more persistent questions about their home life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive her for that. But she’s still my friend. Whatever mistakes she made in the past, we still have so many years of friendship behind us. And I’m worried about her. She needs her friends now more than ever, and I can’t help but fear that this is the start of her withdrawing from us and trying to face this thing alone.
‘Is there really nothing we can do?’ asks Tess. Everyone in the room turns to me expectantly. I suppose usually I am the optimistic one, the one with a plan or a solution or at least hope. But as I look at Sarah, then Emma, then out the window where I can glimpse the school down the road, I feel my hope slipping away. I cross my hands over my stomach. This child will not attend the same school as their sister and father. Perhaps they will grow up not remembering this island at all. I may have been so much younger when I had Molly, but I think I took for granted the amount of support I received from the island women who quickly became my firm friends. But now it feels like our community is falling apart. Things will be different this time.
I think about those two red lines on the pregnancy test and the appointment next week that no one but Jack knows about. How strange that just at the moment where we found an unexpected beginning, we’re faced with this sense of an ending too. Right now, we might all still be here, but I know that Sarah and Emma leaving will just be the start. With the closure of the school now an inevitability, our island is about to change forever. Some people might say that it’s just a place and that there are endless other places to live. But the thing is, this island isn’t just a place. It’s where I found love and friendship and raised my daughter, watching her take her first steps on the beach and waving to her from the gate on her first day of school. It’s yoga classes with a motley group of women I love as fiercely as sisters, birthday parties on the beach, friends popping in and out of one another’s homes and keeping an eye on one another. It’s the constant smell and sound of the sea, the weather that changes as quickly as the moods of a hormonal teenager, a landscape that seeps into your very bones. Alongside my husband and daughter, this windy, remote, tiny island is the love of my life.
