I pull the book off the shelf, running my hand over the faded cover. It’s been years and years since I read this book. I could never bring myself to buy it for Ella. But if I close my eyes I can still remember the opening line of the story.
I reach to place the book carefully back on the shelf, but as I do so something falls from between the pages. I pick up a photograph that has dropped to the floor.
Jack looks about six years old, his face scattered with freckles. Which must make me ten, standing next to him with an arm around his shoulders. It looks as though we are on the beach by the village, near the school. I can’t remember who took the photograph but I remember the feel of the sun on my face, my little brother standing by my side. My expression looks so serious as I face the camera. But Jack isn’t looking straight ahead. He is looking at me. His head is tilted up towards mine and he is smiling. Looking at the photograph a thought enters my mind like a moth slipping in through a window. Maybe there is hope for us yet.
Chapter 16
Alice
I can hear Ella and Molly talking in the kitchen as I sort through the washing in the utility room at the back of the house. Their voices blur into one another, a steady stream of chatter. I lean back on my heels, listening. I catch the sound of Lorna entering the room and wishing them good morning, then finish loading the washing machine and join them all in the kitchen. As I step inside, Ella is just asking Lorna a question.
‘Mum,’ she says, using the same dragged-out voice Molly uses when she wants something. I try my best to suppress a laugh. Lorna catches my eye and we smile at one another knowingly.
‘Molly says that Uncle Jack and Aunt Alice’s friend Mallachy has a boat and does tours, and that he could take us over to Caora Island.’
Is it just my imagination or does Lorna stiffen slightly? Ella perseveres.
‘Olive’s dad has a boat too but it’s only a really small one and he says he doesn’t trust it to go all the way there, that we’d be better off asking Mallachy instead. He might even take us to see the puffins that nest on the cliffs below the lighthouse, isn’t that right, Molly?’
‘Yeah, his trips are great. Mum, can we ask Mallachy to take us?’
I glance again at Lorna, trying to read her expression.
‘Well, I don’t mind but Auntie Lorna has to be OK with it too. And you have to check with Auntie Sarah if you want Olive to join you. And then of course you’d have to ask Mallachy.’
‘So, what do you think, Mum?’ says Ella. ‘Can we?’
Her eyebrows furrow and I wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing. Perhaps I should have given Molly a vaguer answer and checked with Lorna separately. Maybe Ella can’t swim? Or perhaps Lorna doesn’t trust Mallachy to take the girls out – I suppose she barely knows him after all. I guess living in a big city is different, you grow warier of other people. I forget that it’s not totally normal to leave your door permanently unlocked, to let your children flit in and out of neighbours’ houses and to not always know exactly where they are but to not worry about that. They can’t go far.
‘We’ll see,’ replies Lorna after a moment’s pause.
Ella sighs and rises from the table, loudly stacking her breakfast things in the dishwasher before disappearing upstairs. I expect Molly to follow but she lingers for a moment, looking carefully at Lorna. I wonder suddenly what she’s making of all this. She’s been so busy with Ella and Olive that I haven’t had any alone time with her since our visitors arrived. She seems happy, excitedly showing Ella around the island. And there’s the beach clean-up initiative too which the girls have now expanded to include pretty much all the island children. They’re planning on writing letters to our MP about getting the government to do more to combat the problem of single-use plastics. But despite her cheerfulness and her impressive drive, these past few days have been unsettling. It’s all a lot to take in.
‘What was Dad like when he was little?’ she says suddenly. I see Lorna’s eyebrows rise and feel mine lifting too. I watch as Molly leans forward slightly, clearly eager for an answer, and realise that I want to hear too.
‘Only, he never really talks about his childhood,’ Molly adds quietly, flashing her glance in my direction before looking down at the table. ‘And I’ve seen barely any photos of him when he was little. There are only a couple that Dad’s shown me and there were never any at Grandma and Grandad’s house. I suppose I could have asked them but …’
Despite the fact Molly only sees them a couple of times a year, she has always been closer to my parents than she ever was to Jack’s. Ever since I finally persuaded Mum and Dad to get a laptop I sometimes hear their voices coming from Molly’s bedroom and peer inside to find that she’s Skyping with them, my dad’s face enormous because he doesn’t believe the laptop’s microphone can pick up his voice so insists on sitting millimetres from the screen.
‘Your dad had freckles just like you,’ says Lorna and a smile breaks like sunshine across my daughter’s face. I can’t help but smile too.
‘He loved the Moomintrolls,’ she continues, ‘and his toy train. He was clever, but didn’t like putting his hand up in school.’
‘That sounds a bit like me,’ Molly says eagerly then adds quickly. ‘Not that I’m clever, just that I don’t always like putting my hand up.’
I watch her wriggling in her seat with embarrassment, poor thing, but Lorna smiles reassuringly.
‘I’m sure you are very clever. Your mum tells me you’re doing really well at school. And it must have been daunting going from the island primary school to your secondary school on the mainland.’
Molly shrugs slightly but her pink cheeks give her away. My heart gives a painful little squeeze.
I think it was harder for me than it was for Molly when she started secondary school. I always knew the day would come – I’d known ever since she was born that if we were to stay on the island, her leaving for secondary school was just something I’d have to deal with. Jean did her best to help prepare me too.
‘Everyone finds it tough at first,’ she told me. ‘But they all adjust.’ Over the years she organised several excursions to the mainland with the children to try to get them used to the idea of what was to come, and I volunteered on every one. I remember a particular two-day trip to Glasgow to take the children to the galleries and museums there. Sarah volunteered too and Jean, Sarah and I spent those two days shepherding children who were not used to a big city during the day, and at night sharing wine Jean had smuggled along with her in her backpack, in one of the rooms in the cheap hotel we’d booked out for the trip.
The year before Molly was due to finish primary school it all became painfully real though. I even tried to persuade Jack that we should move to the mainland. I couldn’t bear the thought of only seeing my daughter at weekends and holidays. I grew angry at Jack. I’d moved my whole life to be here with him, far away from everyone I knew. Having to say goodbye to my daughter – it felt like he was asking too much of me. Olive is a year older than Molly so had already started at the mainland school and I remember turning up on Sarah’s doorstep one evening in floods of tears, telling her that I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t let Molly go.
Sarah took me inside, poured me wine and called Jean to come and join us. Together the three of us talked.
