As she turns to leave, her phone beeps and she pulls it quickly from the back pocket of her denim shorts. Looking down, her face spreads into an even wider smile.
‘Olive?’ I ask. But she shakes her head.
‘Ella.’
I can see the excitement on her face, the eagerness and anticipation. It’s been there since Jack and I agreed to the plan, so carefully organised between the two girls. I feel a sort of excitement too with a mix of nerves and anxiety thrown in for good measure. How will the next few days go? Will we get through it? How will Jack cope? And what will our visitors think of the house, the farm, and me?
‘OK, I’m going now,’ Molly says, slipping the phone back into her pocket. I wave from my spot by the sofa and then she is gone in a blur of energy and movement. I watch her half-walking, half-running down the bumpy farm track and spot her best friend Olive in the distance waiting for her. Turning back to the room, I give the pillows another thump.
‘I think you have sufficiently plumped those cushions,’ comes a voice from the doorway.
Jack leans against the frame, his grey eyes watching me, his face serious. He’s dressed in his battered, mud-stained jeans and a grey T-shirt. I picture his muddy boots by the doorstep and the green overalls he wears for the heavier-duty farm work. He must be in for a tea break. As I watch him I picture him when we first met, him nineteen, me just turned eighteen. Back then his hair was longer and free of any specks of grey, his curls messy, his expression serious like it is now. He was so earnest as he worked on the farm but so gentle too, planting seeds with delicacy and care. Just one of the reasons why I fell in love with him.
‘You’re probably right,’ I reply, straightening the throw on the back of the sofa. ‘There might be no cushion left if I keep going.’
I expect him to smile, waiting for the skin around his eyes to crinkle and for his irises to sparkle the way they do for me and Molly. His smiles are like an opening, the window into the side of him that wept on our wedding day and when Molly was born and that collects beautiful pebbles and shells from the beach, claiming them like treasure. But he remains stony.
‘I don’t know why you’re bothering.’
I know I shouldn’t care, but his words sting. I’ve been working all day, trying to make the place look as inviting as possible.
‘We don’t often have visitors.’
As I say it I think of my sisters and a lump swells in my throat. They visit once or twice a year and I try to get over to the mainland to see them too, but it’s hard. The journey takes a full day, longer if there’s a storm and the ferry is cancelled. It’s always been the hardest thing about living on a Hebridean island, harder than the long winters when it feels sometimes as though the sun may never rise. My older sisters have busy lives, Caitlin a GP just outside Edinburgh and Shona teaching mathematics at Aberdeen University. They have their families too, a boy and a girl for Caitlin and three boys for Shona: my gorgeous niece and nephews. It’s been a long time since we were all together – last autumn when my sisters came with their families and our parents joined us for a weekend too. I remember how bereft I felt after they all left, wandering through our near-empty house, changing sheets and airing out bedrooms. Shona’s youngest, Finlay, left a soft-toy monkey behind and when I found it beneath his bed I hugged it to my chest, breathing in his little-boy smell before calling Shona to let her know the beloved toy was not lost.
Jack’s face is hard as he runs a hand along the mantelpiece.
‘We don’t even know how long they’ll stay. It just seems a waste of time to me.’
I give the sofa one final smooth with my hand and turn for the door, squeezing past my husband and trying not to let him hear hurt in my voice.
‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got my class. I’ll see you later.’
I change into my yoga gear and climb into the Land Rover, trying to brush off the conversation with Jack as I drive. I know he’s just upset. This is all so hard for him. I focus on the view as I make my way across the island. Kip looks its loveliest today, the sun high in an endless blue sky and the sea stretching out in all directions. The mountain at the centre of the island glows golden in the sunlight, the pine forest deep green at its base as though the branches have been dipped in emerald ink. I still remember arriving here for the first time. It was raining that day, as it so often is up here. I never imagined back then that this island would change my life. I never thought that I would stay.
It doesn’t take long to reach the community hall where I run my classes. The women are waiting for me outside, chatting in the sunshine. They are my students but more importantly, my friends. I climb out of the car and greet them with a smile.
‘Beautiful day,’ says Emma. She is a few years older than me, with pixie-cropped hair and a string of tattoos wrapping round her upper arms. She went to school with Jack and like him stayed on the island, marrying another island native, Duncan McLeod. Together with Duncan’s brother George they run the island’s tiny brewery.
‘No Joy today?’ I ask, turning to Tess, a woman in her late twenties in tie-dyed harem pants and a loose-fitting orange shirt.
‘No,’ she replies. ‘She’s looking after Harry.’
Tess and Joy own a holiday let on the island and run walking tours and photography workshops for tourists. Their baby Harry is nine months old and sometimes joins my classes, sliding along the hall floor on his belly. No one seems to mind as he crawls beneath their downward dog, giggling as he does. But he’s teething at the moment, poor thing, and can be temperamental.
‘How about taking the class outside? The hall is so damned stuffy,’ suggests Morag, my oldest class member at eighty, but surprisingly flexible for her age. She tells me she used to be a ballet dancer, although I’m not sure whether I believe her because over the years she has claimed to have been a ship’s captain, a bomb disposal expert, a stunt double, a horse trainer and the first female firefighter in Scotland. Today she is dressed in a pair of bright yellow leggings and a baggy white T-shirt with ‘Choose Love’ written on it in bold black letters.
‘Good idea. Let’s make the most of the weather.’
‘While it lasts,’ adds Kerstin, the tall woman in her fifties who left a busy job in banking (and her husband) five or so years ago to move here with her cats and has been coming to my classes ever since.
‘Is this all of us?’ I ask the group.
‘Yes,’ replies Tess, ‘Sarah and Brenda are still on the mainland and Jean wasn’t feeling up to it today.’
Brenda is in her sixties and has bright pink hair that always makes me smile and makes her easy to spot when she takes her long walks across the island. She was one of the first friends I made when I moved here. She’d arrived just a couple of years before me so I guess she understood what it felt like to be a newcomer. Now, she’s Molly’s godmother and is the very best kind: without children of her own she spoils Molly with outlandish but thoughtful gifts and her door is always open for cups of tea and homemade biscuits. Molly and I may be close and she may have her friendships with Olive and the other island children, but it has always been a comfort to know there is another adult besides Jack and me whom she can turn to if she needs to. Not that she just has the one. That’s one thing I hadn’t quite realised when I became pregnant: when you have a baby here they become the island’s child, not just your own. Sarah’s another of my closest friends, an island native like Emma, and Molly’s best friend Olive’s mum. And Jean is the island school’s headteacher, but over the years has become my friend too. The same qualities that make her a great teacher – her curiosity and kindness and the interest she takes in everyone from small children to adults – also make her a great friend. A flash of worry sparks in my mind as I think of her. I hope she’s doing all right. Despite my concerns, I force a smile.
‘OK then, let’s get going.’
