Very.
‘Why would I be scared?’
She flashes me a look that only an old woman missing several teeth can manage.
‘OK, maybe I’m a little nervous.’
‘Aye, I’m not surprised. There are some awful bloody gossips on this island.’
I’m not sure whether to laugh or shudder. This was once where I worked, where I joined the other islanders in watching people coming and going and exchanging island news. But that was such a long time ago. I manage a tight smile in Morag’s direction.
‘But they all mean well,’ she adds. ‘Right, I’m bloody parched, I need a drink.’
Heads turn as we open the door, but thankfully the conversations continue. I scan the room, searching out faces I recognise. Is that Mary, one of the younger children who grew up with me on the island? And I’m sure that older couple look familiar. The woman catches my eye.
‘So it is true. Lorna Irvine returns,’ she says, stepping away from the bar and towards our group.
‘Mrs Anderson,’ I say, remembering just in time. She was little Sophie and David’s mother – twins several years below me at school. She and her husband were also my parents’ closest friends; I remember seeing them and a group of other equally devout church-goers huddled with my parents near the minster after each service. I try to shake off the memory as I greet her.
‘How nice to see you. How are Sophie and David?’
Alice gestures at me, then to a table in the corner where the other women are pulling up chairs. I nod and she joins them, leaving me alone with Mrs Anderson.
‘Oh, they are very good, thank you. Sophie still lives here with her family, David is on the mainland but not far away, thankgoodness. They’ve both been wonderful like that, I’d have been beside myself if they left the area.’
I look down at my hands.
‘And I hear you have a daughter,’ Mrs Anderson continues. ‘Is she here with you on the island? I hope she’s not a tearaway like you were – we don’t want her corrupting our little ones!’
She laughs stiffly and I slip my hands into my pockets and dig my nails into my thighs.
‘Awful about your parents, by the way,’ chips in Mr Anderson, who has been standing by his wife’s side. ‘They were such good friends and wonderful supporters of the church.’
‘Yes, they always did their bit to support the church,’ I just about manage. ‘Well, I’d better be getting back to my group now. Do pass on my best to Sophie and David.’
I turn and walk away before I have time to say anything else, anything I might regret. I’m shaking slightly, my body stiff.
At the table Morag is already most of the way through a dram of whisky. I sit down beside her.
‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ she says. ‘Painful but over quickly. Like killing a chicken.’
I’ve personally never killed a chicken so it’s impossible to compare. But I still feel shaky from the conversation. How many other people on the island believe the stories my parents told and the façade of our life they worked so hard to create? And what Mrs Anderson said about Ella – well it was hard not to knock her drink out of her hand. My daughter and I may have our disagreements but she is so good really. I feel immensely proud of her.
Not that I was ever particularly bad. Yes, I dyed my hair purple and there was that one time my father caught me smoking at the bottom of the garden. The Macleod brothers bought a packet when they turned sixteen and shared them among the other kids who were around their age. I took one, curious to see what all the fuss was about. I didn’t smoke it there and then, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of my friends if I started coughing and spluttering. Instead I waited for an afternoon when I knew my parents would be out, my father at The Lookout and my mother arranging flowers in the church for an upcoming baptism. I went down to the very bottom of the garden, near the forest, using matches borrowed from the fireplace to light the cigarette. Would smoking it make me feel like a grown-up? Would I suddenly feel cool, sophisticated? As soon as I inhaled I knew it was a mistake. I started coughing immediately. My father must have heard me, back from The Lookout unusually early (I have always suspected he got asked quietly to leave). He was clearly drunk when he reached me and was furious. I’ve never smoked since.
For years I thought Iwasbad because of the way my parents reacted to things like that one foolish, curious cigarette, and the words they used to describe me. ‘Tearaway’ ‘trouble’ ‘out of control’. But was I really so bad? I think maybe I was just a teenager.
‘Here, take a menu, Lorna,’ says Alice, smiling gently and passing me a worn-looking laminated sheet. As I smile back at her I think back to our conversation earlier in the car. It was so unlike me to open up that much about the past, about Rob and what it was like to look after a baby entirely on my own. But there’s something about Alice that makes her easy to talk to. She’s warm and friendly, but I guess more than that she already knows the thing I try so hard to hide from others – the long estrangement from my family. I don’t need to put my usual walls up with her. It surprises me how much of a relief that is.
The other women chat contentedly around me and I focus on the list of options on the menu. When I turn back I notice that Morag has fallen asleep in the chair beside me and is snoring softly.
We place our orders, the barman bringing us several packets of crisps to keep us going, on Alice’s instruction.
‘So, tell us what you do then, love?’ asks Brenda, tearing open a packet of crisps and laying it on the table for everyone to share.
I can’t help but glance in the direction of Jean, my old teacher.
‘I’m deputy head at a primary school on the Isle of Dogs in East London, where I live.’
