We smile at one another and my heart races with the simplicity of it.
‘She’ll be all right,’ he says with a small nod.
There’s a moment’s pause as we continue to sit next to one another, looking out to sea. I’ve thought about a moment like this for years and years. Just sitting next to my brother, not saying anything even, just there beside one another. How has it taken me this long to get here? I place my hand on the top of the wall, just centimetres from his.
‘Jack, I want to tell you how sorry I am. For everything. For leaving, for not saying goodbye, for everything I missed. I’m truly sorry, for all of it.’
The words feel tight in my throat, but once they are out I can’t help but experience a rush of relief. I think I’ve been waiting years to say them.
I watch Jack closely, searching his face for a reaction. He frowns, shaking his head slightly.
‘I’m sorry too. You know, I spent years and years being angry with you.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I was so angry at you for leaving and for not staying in touch. But you wrote to me. I could have written back.’
I think again of those unanswered letters, the jolt I felt whenever a hand-written envelope landed on my mat and the disappointment that followed when the letter was never from him. I never blamed him, but I clung onto hope that he might one day reply.
‘This separation …’ he pauses. ‘Well it wasn’t just you, Lorna.’
I’ve carried my guilt for most of my life. I don’t think it will ever totally go away, but it feels as though my brother has just given me permission to put it down for a moment, to let it go.
‘And I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day at the house,’ he continues, rubbing his cheek. ‘I’ve been trying to remember. It’s hard though, I feel like everything is foggy, like I’m struggling to see things clearly. It’s like I can’t trust my own memories.’
I nod slowly.
‘I understand. I’ve felt like that at times too.’
When you’re a child, the people around you control your narrative.Lorna’s clumsy, she’s a tearaway, she needs to learn how to behave.It’s only after I left the island and grew older that I managed to truly see what had really happened, to put my own words to it. Jack never had that separation. And the thing is, the more that other people tell your story for you, the more it comes to feel real.
‘Last night I couldn’t sleep and these things kept coming back to me,’ he says. ‘I remembered the smell of smoke and petrol coming through my bedroom window from outside.’
My chest tightens as I remember the same smell, the smell that has stayed with me after all these years and still visits me at night, filling my sleeping mind with its memory. Flames flickering at the bottom of the garden. My paintings and my hopes for the future burning on a smoking pile of fire. Jack turns to me, fixing me with his grey eyes.
‘I remembered it, Lorna. Last night I remembered the fire. And it suddenly made no sense to me the thing they’d always told me, that you started it. Why would you do something like that? Of course you didn’t start the fire. They did.’
My throat feels choked and tears spring hotly to my eyes. I let out a sob, my heart racing with the joy and grief and relief of being believed. Jack’s hand reaches across the wall for mine. He holds it as I cry and the fields and the sea stretch ahead of us in green and blue.
‘I’m sorry, Lorna,’ he says quietly, squeezing my hand.
‘Oh Jack, I’m sorry too.’
I shuffle closer and lean my head against his shoulder. He lifts a hand to my hair. I don’t know how long we stay there. It could be seconds, it could be years. All I can focus on is the feel of my brother beside me, the way we once were, the way we should always have been.
Eventually, my tears slow and I move away slightly, wiping my face on my sleeve.
‘Is it OK if we stay on the island a little longer?’ I ask him.
‘Stay as long as you like,’ he says quietly.
My brother and I haven’t been part of each other’s lives in over twenty years. There are still so many things we need to discuss, so many questions that need answering. But we are here.
I think again about the advice Jack shared about creating stone walls. Sometimes there are storms, and sometimes things that once felt strong tumble and fall. But they can be built again, one stone at a time. As I sit next to my brother watching the waves lap against the beach in the distance I feel like that’s what we are finally doing. We are rebuilding our wall, one stone at a time.
Chapter 32
Alice
