“This house is amazing.” Iris stood in the lounge, looking out over the Strait, her arms folded. The sky and the sea blended into a myriad of grey, a thin mist clouding over the water so the view across to the mainland was shrouded. “This view is amazing. I can totally understand why you’re staying here and this is your place.”
“I can’t imagine being anywhere else,” I said, standing slightly behind her and looking at the same view. “That doesn’t mean I don’t like travelling to places and visiting people, but this is where I want to come home to. I find it interesting how my brothers chose the same.”
“Genetics. Something in your core makes you gravitate to the same things.” She turned around to look at me. “I think Ivy and me were similar.”
“Similar. But you’re very different too. Ivy was mysterious, or she made herself seem that way. I never felt like I got the whole story from her but with you I do.” I’d spent time thinking aboutthe sisters and how they were very similar. I’d known Iris longer now than I’d known Ivy, so there was a clear reason why I’d know her better, but I knew Iris better than her sister after only a few months.
“I know what you mean. She very much chose what she said to each person and what she wanted them to know. I think she liked being seen as enigmatic, which she was. She definitely wasn’t an open book. Not like you.”
Panic rose. Was I giving away any of those thoughts I’d had about Iris and the mattresses? “I’m not that obvious, am I?”
She laughed and shook her head. “No. Not quite, but you give more of yourself. I feel I know you, I’ve seen some vulnerability, which you never got from Ivy.”
I let go of the breath I’d been holding. “You didn’t.” I decided I needed to change the subject. “What do you want to do tonight? We can head into town and get something to eat at the Puffin Inn, or we can eat here. I can make a fish pie and the wine’s all stocked up. If we want to walk into town we need to leave now before the rain starts.” I wasn’t as accurate as Finn or Roe at predicting the weather, but even I could tell that we had heavy rain incoming.
“How about we stay in tonight and head out tomorrow? I can help you cook. I’m goosed from the journey and everything too, and I’d like to be firing on all cylinders when I meet your brothers and friends.” She headed to the sofa and sat down on it, sinking in like she was on a cloud.
It was pretty good. I’d slept on it more than a few times.
“That suits me. If the weather’s good we can walk down to Ivy’s Arch and the beach there.” I wanted to show Iris the place I remembered her sister. It wasn’t maudlin or morose, even though it had been at first. Now it was a place where we gathered to play music or talk or take photos, or just be. But it was known as Ivy’s Arch, the wooden archway and unusual gate coveredwith ivy at the peak of summer and for me and my brothers and our friends, it had become synonymous with the woman who’d lived here for a short time, but had such an impact, even if she’d never intended too.
Iris nodded, her expression curious. “I’ll take my camera and get some shots.”
We talked about the weather, the light, the likelihood of seeing Aurora Borealis. I told her stories about the place, some of which I’d learned from Mavis, some of which were legends accrued from people who told tales in pubs by a fire on a winter’s night.
We didn’t talk about why she was here. We didn’t acknowledge the decision we were going to make.
The conversation while I cooked and she helped, then while we ate, was about Puffin Bay and the people who lived there.
It was as if we weren’t considering having a child together. Iris was just here, visiting an old friend with whom she shared a history.
We didn’t discuss that we might be sharing a future too.
Iris
Islept better than I had any right to, given I was in a strange bed in a strange place with strange noises, or lack of noises.
My apartment in London’s Soho district was central, in the midst of the hustle of theatre-goers and people socialising as well as all the tourists. I had triple glazed windows which eradicated most of the noise but given I liked to sleep with a window open, I’d grown use to a lullaby of sounds.
Last night the only sound had been that of the sea and the wind and the rain, with the occasional interruption from a seagull. There were no shouted words or the sound of traffic or the dulcet noises of someone throwing up the bad choice of a late-night kebab after too many jaeger-bombs. Just a soundscape of nature.
I woke when it grew light, having not bothered to close the blinds because there was no one to look inside given my only neighbours wore feathers. The bed was comfy and soft, the cotton bedding silky and luxurious without feeling like it came from a packet that shouted about how much the thread count was.
I was in Gully’s house in Puffin Bay, a fact that took me a few seconds to bring to mind. I was here to stay with my closest friend in a place my sister had loved and spent her final days.
I was here to decide whether to go ahead with trying to get pregnant through unconventional means, something nature had decided when I was too young to really understand what that would mean.
I hadn’t grieved about my infertility until my school friends started on their own families. It was when I saw their photos on social media, hands cupping bumps, faces glowing, captions about being grateful, when it hit that for me to have that would be a complicated process. By this time, I knew what Ivy had done. She’d had her eggs harvested when I was twenty-one, letting me know in a text which was followed up with some legal documents that enabled me to use her eggs in order to have a baby of my own.
It was the greatest gift she could’ve given me. I knew that at the time, but didn’t acknowledge it, because I didn’t know how to. I could carry a baby and give birth, or there was no reason that we knew why I couldn’t, but my eggs weren’t there. The beauty of early menopause, and I meant that as sarcastically as possible.
I looked at the sea from the window, floor to ceiling glass like they all were on this side of the house, with a view for days over the Menai Strait. The mist from yesterday had lifted, and while the sky and the sea were still the shade of winter grey, I could see the mountains of Eryri and the shape of the landscape. A few boats bobbed up and down on the tide and gulls dipped and dived on the wind.
It was perfect.
Bed stopped feeling as appealing, the urge to grab my camera the biggest driver right now. Morning light, however pale at thistime of year, glimmered down, cascading through the grey. This needed to be captured.
Light could change within seconds, which was why I pulled on sweatpants and a hoodie over my pyjamas and didn’t bother checking the mirror. I was well aware that my hair would be shooting out in whichever direction and my skin was probably creased from sleep, but all that mattered was registering this moment forever.
