Mrs D is calling me. Lily has gone down with my bag. I’m just carrying my red leather case and my baby. I’m leaving you here. I’ve been carefully prying up a floorboard for weeks. I wasn’t sure. But I need to leave Guillemot a present and this is all I can think of. William says all navy men are terribly superstitious. He says seabirds carry the souls of dead sailors. He says mermaids are real. He says I shouldn’t sing into the wind because it will bring bad luck. He says guillemots are the souls of dead children who were playing on a cliff one day when it collapsed. It’s why they’re such funny, pretty birds—they’re just happy little children forever and they don’t know they’re dead.
I think that’s not a bad way to go.
Aleksey clicked his phone off and blinked into the wind. They were docking. She was here on Scilly somewhere. He felt it. Had not Billy said his mum was coming for him? Aleksey was fairly sure that not only had Jenna given birth alone and unwed, she’d given birth to a baby who needed special care—shewas littleWilliam’smother.Mum’ll fix that for you when she’s here. Mum always makes nasty bumps go away. And she could fix fingers, too. Would that not be the kind of apocryphal family story that got embellished every time it was told?—when I fixed William’s finger becoming when I sewed William’s hand back on… Maybe that was just him. But if he could find Jenna, he was sure he would find Billy. No, he could not change the past for her, but he could perhaps make her future, and Billy’s, a great deal easier. He could not imagine the struggle she must have had keeping Billy, refusing to give him up. Perhaps she had let William help her raise him after all, which is why the little man loved the lighthouse and knew all about it. But Jenna would be in her seventies now and must be worrying about Billy’s future when she was gone.
They went straight to the boat hire shop, not wanting to linger in the town where Aleksey felt eyes upon him, accusing fingers pointing at him.Murderer…
Ben was checking his phone, making a few last texts before they lost signal. Aleksey suspected Emilia was being sent a picture. He suddenly pulled his phone back out and sent her a text:Am looking at new RAV4s. Do not come in pink so can’t buy you one. Shame.’
Before he got a response back from her, his phone rang. He answered it. It was the moron, which made him immediately ask, ‘Radulf?’
Squeezy chuckled. ‘He’s upside down on Florentine brocade—the professor’s out. How’d the car go? Ben says it does a hundred and ninety. Nought to sixty in three point eight seconds. But possibly not when you’re in it with him…’
‘What do you want? We’re about to head over to Guillemot.’
‘Yeah, I just reckoned you might wanna know. The professor remembered where he heard that witchy name, that Jenna lass. He was uploading his photos.’
‘Yes, I think she lives here on St Mary’s. She’s Billy’s mother, I’m sure of it.’
‘Huh. Your lighthouse munchkin? That’s a shame then. It was in the batch he took of the church while he was waitin’ for us at that asylum place.’
‘Benhar?’
‘That’s the one. She was on a gravestone. Well, under it, I guess. Want me to send you the photo?’
Aleksey could summon nothing but a quiet, ‘Yes. Thank you.’ Ben read something in his expression and came closer.
When there was a ping, they looked at the photo together. It showed a simple stone, but it was artfully posed with the old church in the background and some of the heath with the setting sun making a dramatic backdrop to the dark granite memorial.Jenna Tregenza Born 1948, Died 1965. Now a stranger on an unknown shore.
Aleksey tipped his head to one side and brushed his fingertip over the date. ‘1965.’
‘What?’
‘That’s the year she gave birth. I thought the moron meant she’djustdied—that I had just missed finding her. She can’t be Billy’s mother then. He said his mother was still alive, didn’t he?’
‘Maybe he was adopted after Jenna died, and he calls that woman his mother?’
Aleksey nodded, not really listening. He was thinking about a little girl and her belief that it didn’t take two planes to reach where her mother was.
‘What do you want to do? You want to go and see it for yourself, don’t you? Now.’ Without waiting for confirmation, Ben hefted the bags onto the boat. ‘Benhar it is then.’
He had been so sure he would find her, bring her back to Guillemot and let her run her hands over the old banister once more. He had wanted her to call Guillemot her home and be able to mean it.
Aleksey hoped the wind would be strong on the crossing over.
***
Chapter Thirty-eight
Their boat was no faster than the little cruise one had been and it took them an hour to get to Benhar.
Before Ben headed into the harbour, he announced, ‘I’m going to circle the asylum.’
‘Why?’
Ben didn’t reply, so Aleksey came to stand alongside him as they bounced over the slight swells until they rounded the main island and were motoring parallel to the causeway. It was low tide and the overturned sea tractor was entirely uncovered. Hung with long strands of dark green seaweed, it more resembled a sleeping, hairy sea monster than a machine made by man.
The sides of the rocky promontory that held the children’s home were steep, and at low tide also covered in seaweed. Ben suddenly said, ‘This would be what Light Island would be like—if Ben’s Bottom ever gave way.’ Aleksey almost choked and Ben hit him, but it brought them both back to better moods, and he shook himself and kissed Ben, who was still laughing at the image. But he was right—Benhar was possibly Light Island after a few more years of storms: main island, causeway, rocky headland.
