I don’t want to push him, but this is more than he’s said to me about how he’s feeling since she’s arrived. Perhaps it’s the darkness that loosens his words. I shuffle even closer and then try again, wanting to make the most of this brief moment of openness.
‘But you don’t know that she’s not going to come back. This could be the start of something. Maybe if you two had a proper talk …’
But he shakes his head again.
‘There’s no point. She left once and I know she’s going to leave again.’
I imagine Jack at fourteen, watching his sister leaving the island on the ferry. However much I might have bonded with Lorna since she arrived, and whatever reasons she might have had for leaving, I still think of that boy left behind on the island and I ache for him.
‘I always thought she might come back for me,’ he says quietly into the dark, ‘but she never did.’
I want to tell him what Lorna told me – that she wanted to take him with her – but I sense that’s not what he needs right now. Instead, I stroke his cheeks and as I do I feel that they’re damp.
If I’m totally honest, sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d married a different kind of man. Someone more open, who didn’t have these silences and these moods. Over the years we’ve had our downs as well as our ups. We fought countless times about his parents and the demands they put on him, as well as thousands of other forgettable things. And our inability to have another baby challenged us too, at times bringing us closer together but at others feeling as though it might pull us apart. I suppose that’s just marriage though. But so too is this: feeling like my heart could break in two with love and pain for him, kissing his tear-soaked cheeks in the darkness of our bedroom, holding him tightly to me and wishing the world was a better, kinder, easier place if only for him.
‘It’s going to be OK, my darling,’ I say softly, not because I know how but because it’s the only thing to say.
Chapter 15
Lorna
I still feel embarrassed about what happened at Mallachy’s studio yesterday, or whatnearlyhappened. I barely know him and certainly didn’t expect to end up in his house when I headed out on my run. But we had such a good time in his studio. And then there was that current that seemed to pass between us. I could suddenly imagine what it might feel like to step closer, to tilt my face up towards his, to wrap my arms around his waist …
It’s probably just because it’s been a long time since I was last with a man. That must explain the feeling of intensity I experienced in his studio. The possibility that it might be anything more than that is too much to contemplate. I’m not here to meet someone. I don’t do relationships. My life is all about Ella – the two of us against the world. It’s been that way for years and we’ve managed OK, haven’t we?
The sound of Alice stepping inside the kitchen brings me out of my thoughts. It’s morning and Ella and Molly have already headed out with rucksacks and bicycles, Ella’s camera slung around her neck. I tried to kiss her before she left but she wriggled away. I hope she’s OK. I want to ask her what’s wrong but remember Alice’s advice. Ella will come back to me when she’s ready. At least I hope she will.
Alice carries a basket filled with eggs and places it on the table. She’s wearing pale jeans rolled up at the ankles and a polka-dot shirt tied loosely at her waist.
‘Wow, are those all from your chickens?’
‘Yep! We provide most of the eggs for the village shop. Speaking of which, I really need to go down there today and do a food shop.’
‘I can go for you if you like,’ I volunteer.
‘If you don’t mind, that would be great,’ she replies. ‘It’s a busy day here. I need to get back out in a minute and help Jack fix one of the walls in the fields before the sheep work out the gap is there and start going for a wander. And if you leave this morning you’ll catch the ferry and can pick up our post – if that’s OK? It’s a long walk though, take my bike.’
Alice’s purple bike is splattered with mud, a basket on the front and a plastic milk carton lashed to the rack on the back with a shopping bag folded up inside. She hands me a helmet. The last time I cycled was here on the island when I was a child. Back then, my bike was my freedom. I cycled to and from primary school with Sarah, and often to Sarah’s house or her grandparents’ house after school. There is a long downhill section leading to the village and on the way to school Sarah and I would freewheel, the wind rushing through our hair, laughter pouring from our mouths and trailing behind us. It meant pedalling uphill to return home but it was always worth it for that brief feeling of lightness and joy I experienced every morning. When we cycled fast like that I felt almost as though I was flying.
I was eleven when my father took my bike away, coming to the end of my last term at primary school. One morning when I woke up and prepared to cycle to school with Sarah I found my bike was missing. My father told me it had broken, but he wouldn’t tell me how. In any case it never got replaced despite my pleading. My father drove me to school that day. I spotted Sarah out the car window, cycling alone. After that I always had to ask one of my parents to drive me if I wanted to visit Sarah or anyone else on the island, or instead face the long walk, often in the rain. I remember my father smirking every time I asked for a lift.
‘See how much I do for you?’ he’d say. It was part of the background rhetoric of my life. That I was a burden, an inconvenience, and should be eternally grateful to my parents. For a long time, I believed it.
And then Sarah left for the secondary school like all the other older children, leaving the island during the week and returning on weekends and during holidays. When that happened, I would have given anything to have just one more day cycling to school with her, feeling as though our wheels could leave the ground.
But despite how much I used to enjoy cycling it’s been a long time and as I climb onto the bike I’m giddy with nerves. I kick off and wobble immediately, veering from left to right. I really hope no one is watching. I don’t look behind me to check. Gripping tightly onto the handlebars I rattle down the track. This is harder than I remember. I swerve precariously around dips in the road, trying to avoid the deepest puddles and the largest rocks. At moments I’m convinced I’m going to slip and come tumbling off. But somehow, I manage to maintain my balance. When I reach the main island road the tarmac is a smooth relief.
The rain of yesterday has disappeared and the sky is powder blue. From the road I have a sweeping view across the island. The inky green of the pine forest, the rolling moor dotted with sheep, the scattering of cottages with Scottish flags in the gardens and the long beach that leads down to the jetty and the village. I spot Mallachy’s house at the far end of the beach, the boat calm today by the jetty. I think of the smell of his jumper and picture his studio filled with sketches and feel my heartrate climbing, my cheeks warm with embarrassment. I should have brought his jumper with me and dropped it off on the way to the village. I’ll return it tomorrow and just hope he’s out. I’m not sure I’m ready to see him again just yet.
My thighs burn as I climb the hill that sits beside the mountain. I might be a runner, but being on a bike again fires up different muscles, muscles that I haven’t used this way in years. It’s a kind of pain that isn’t painful though. It makes me feel alive. Nearing the top, I spot Brenda’s blue house standing just back from the road and the pink flash of her hair as she leans over in the garden, lifting a ball and throwing it for Puff the puppy. Asshe stands she spots me and gives a big wave. I wave back.
And then I crest the hill and see the village spread out below me, seagulls circling the harbour and the ferry approaching through the mist out to sea. As I cycle up and over the hump of the hill the bicycle speeds up. I can feel it in my stomach, gravity pulling me down, the wind brushing against my face and grabbing my hair. The air stings my eyes but I keep them wide open. I pedal fast, building up speed, the moor and trees flashing by in bursts of green. And then I stop pedalling and let myself freewheel. I go even faster than I remember as a child. It’s terrifying. What would happen if I came off? But I’m also grinning, cold tears of wind and joy sliding down my face. The salty air fills my lungs and I imagine I am eight-years-old and Sarah is by my side. I let out a shriek of happiness, the sound causing a cluster of sparrows in a nearby tree to leap from their branches and disperse into the sky.
As I reach the village I press hard on the brakes, the bike screeching and clattering to a stop. That’s when I spot Sarah, not the eight-year-old Sarah of my imagination but the real-life adult her standing outside the village shop, her arms holding a cardboard box piled high with groceries. She’s watching me and I feel a thrill as I notice she’s smiling. Her smile feels like an invitation and I reply by smiling back.
‘Hello,’ I say breathlessly, leaning the bike against the shop wall, wondering for a moment if there’s a bike lock in the basket and then remembering where I am and that it doesn’t matter. I can tell Sarah is trying not to laugh.
‘Do you realise how mad you look?’ she says eventually, still smiling.
