On the face of it, everything looks all right. It’s sunny for the next couple of days; Mum and Dad go out together for walks; they take food with them for picnics. They go on a boat trip and return flushed from sun and the wind, full of stories about the birds they saw, and the basking sharks they watched from the boat on the way back.
I half wish I’d gone with them. Except that I’ve got that horrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all the time now. I can’t stop thinking about what Dad might have been saying down the phone line. My mind worries at it, imagining the sordid details, the words he might have been saying.
Just wait a bit longer; as soon as this holiday is over I can be with you again.
Of course, I would rather be with you than stuck on this island with them . . .
I had to do this, to be sure. But spending this time with her makes me realise that it’s all over . . .
Kate’s old enough now . . . children are resilient . . . she’ll be fine . . .
Does Mum know? Is she full of worry and dread too? Surely she’s guessed something? Or perhaps they’re coming to some sort of agreement. He’ll leave, she’ll have the house . . . Perhaps she’s seeing someone?
Why don’t you ask them straight out? That’s what my friend Molly would say. But Molly hasn’t a clue. Her parents are happy together. Her family talk about everything openly. But we’ve never been like that. If Sam and I were still seeing each other, I could tell him about it. If Sam and I were together, maybe none of this would feel so important . . .
Only I know that’s not true. Not really.
Everything – my whole world – is in the balance, about to tip.
I make myself remember happy times.
Christmas, Hannah’s first year at uni. We rented a cottage in Northumberland with Molly’s family. It didn’t snow, but it was freezing cold. Temperatures plummeted every night, and hoar frost furred every twig and stem, almost as thick as snow. The paths and lane were iced to a slippery polish. We walked on Christmas morning in thick white mist, Dad and Molly’s dad leading the way, using their navigation skills and the map and compass, and we got hopelessly lost, and everyone laughed and it didn’t matter. Not one bit. Mum and Molly’s mum and Hannah cooked Christmas dinner and there was nearly a disaster when the duck fat got too hot and the kitchen was full of smoke but Mum just laughed and laughed and we had to open all the windows and doors and we froze for about two hours, but the meal turned out fine and Molly’s dad cleaned the oven and everything got sorted. After dinner we played silly games and turned off the lights so we could sit with candles and the light from the fire and everyone was relaxed and happy. Mum and Dad cuddled together on the sofa. Dad sang Mum a song he’d written . . .
It’s nice remembering that. Dad, writing songs . . . Dad, happy. Mum’s face glowing in the firelight . . .
Or that summer we went to the beach in Wales, where Dad climbed down the cliff quicker than everyone else, so that as the rest of us came over the edge of the hill we looked down and saw the words he had written in the sand: I LOVE YOU!
It was the most romantic thing we’d ever seen him do for Mum. She had tears in her eyes.
But that was all years ago. It hasn’t been like that for a long, long time.
The squeal of bike brakes makes me look up. Finn’s skidded to a stop outside the house. I jump up, check my face quickly to make sure he can’t tell I’ve been crying, and go to the door.
‘Hello, you! Busy?’ he asks.
My face goes hot. It’s so obvious I’m not doing anything. Wasting my day.
‘Want to come and help get the peat? Everyone’s coming. You can meet them all. Tim and Jamie and the others.’
I nod. ‘OK.’
‘It’ll be hard work, mind.’
He’s remembering what I was like with the cockle picking.
‘I’ll do my best,’ I say. ‘I’m not used to it, that’s all. Not like your Isla.’
Her name slips out before I’ve really thought. He gives me a funny look. ‘She’s not mine,’ he says very quietly.
‘Sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I know I’m rubbish at practical things.’
‘Stop that,’ Finn says. ‘You’re just fine, Kate. Stop putting yourself down.’
Tears well up again. I turn my head so he can’t see, grab my scarf and a jacket from the hooks in the hall.
Is that what I do? I wonder. Put myself down?
‘I’ll give you a backie if you like,’ Finn says.
‘A what?’
‘A ride on the back of the bike. It’ll be quicker that way.’
‘Oh! Yes, OK.’
He waits for me to clamber on behind him. ‘Hold on tight!’ he says. ‘It’s a bit of a bumpy ride. And you’ll have to get off for the hill.’
We wobble along through the village, me trying to balance and laughing so much I nearly fall off. I have to walk the next bit, which is uphill. The very last bit is the best: a long freewheel down the track to the Manse. At the bottom, the bike slows, stops and I get off. I can’t stop smiling.
Finn grins. ‘You should get yourself a bike!’ he says. ‘You’d really enjoy it. You could get around the whole island then, and see the best places.’
‘Mum hired one from the man at the garage,’ I tell him. ‘But it was rubbish. Old and cranky and she got a puncture.’
‘We might have one you could borrow,’ Finn says. ‘We’ll look in the shed later.’
Alex waves from the door of the Manse. I wave back. Piers and Thea are putting tools into the back of the jeep. A dark-haired, good-looking bloke in a tweed jacket and jeans is leaning against the stone wall, a mug of coffee in one hand which he raises as if in greeting.
‘That’s Tim,’ Finn says. ‘Jamie and Clara are somewhere around too.’ He waves vaguely in the direction of the house.
‘We won’t all fit in the jeep,’ I say. Duh! Obviously.
‘No. So you and I can go on the bike, and the others will walk up.’
‘What do we have to do exactly?’
‘Piers and I will finish cutting the peat. You can help shift the stuff that’s already been cut and dried; put the peats in sacks so we can bring them back down in the jeep. Then we build the proper peat stack next to the house. I’ll show you: there’s a special way to do it, so the peats can dry out and then make a weatherproof skin to last the winter.’
‘It sounds complicated,’ I say.
‘Not really. It’s easier if everyone helps. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.’
Everyone’s quite a lot older than us. Finn isn’t intimidated like me, but that’s because he knows them all and, in any case, he’s the one who seems to know the most about the peat and the traditional ways to do things, more than his older brothers even.
Piers and Thea climb into the jeep.
‘Here’s Jamie and Clara,’ Finn says. ‘Come and say hello.’
Jamie’s a rounder, more solid version of Piers, with fairer, curlier hair. Clara is petite and gorgeous, with short fair hair and almond-shaped eyes like a pixie.
‘This is Kate,’ Finn tells them. ‘She’s staying at Fiona’s place for the summer.’
‘Hi,’ Clara says. ‘Nice to meet you, Kate.’
Jamie nods but doesn’t say anything.
‘We’ll see you up there,’ Finn says.
We climb back on the bike. But it’s too difficult to pedal uphill with me: we walk the long way back up the slope until the track levels out again.
This part of the island is covered in springy heather, humming with bees. There are silvery trails of water between black banks of peaty soil, pools reflecting sky. Now, ahead of us, I can see lines of people working at the peat banks. Finn’s smiling, waving. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he says to me. ‘To think we’re doing the exact same work that’s been done on the island for hundreds of years. Except in the old days people would have horses and carts rather than jeeps and cars, of course.’
I think of Mum, at the garden centre, choosing compost. ‘I thought we were running out of peat?’ I say. ‘Like you’re not supposed to buy it for gardening any more.’
‘That’s totally different. Yes, it’s terrible where peat extraction’s happened on a huge mechanical scale, like in parts of Ireland. But this is small scale, sustainable, hand-cutting for one family’s domestic use. It’s like the difference between small scale fishing in a little family boat, versus those vile enormous trawlers with dredge nets that bring up everything off the seabed.’
‘OK, OK,’ I say quickly before he goes on. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m just pig ignorant.’
He gives me a look. ‘Stop it!’
‘I know, I’m doing it again. It’s a habit.’
‘A bad one!’
Tim’s really efficient: he does most of the heavy carrying, lifting the sacks up into the back of the jeep. The rest of us fill the sacks, but talking and larking about at the same time. Piers recites a poem by some Irish poet; he tells me about the Tollund man, found perfectly preserved in a Danish peat bog. Finn works the hardest, of course, cutting a new line of fresh peat with the specially designed spade. Piers and Jamie follow behind, digging the peat and stacking it up. Piers sings at the top of his voice and Jamie joins in. They don’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks. They’re enjoying themselves too much.
‘Are you having a good holiday?’ Tim asks, as he waits for me to fill up a sack.
‘Yes.’ I realise I almost am, in spite of everything. ‘Though it’s not at all how I imagined it would be.’
He heaves the sack up and dumps it in the jeep. ‘What did you imagine?’
‘I don’t know. I had no idea the island was going to be this small, and remote, and so different from anywhere I’ve ever been. Remember being,’ I correct myself. ‘I was here as a baby. And I suppose I didn’t imagine meeting people . . . making new friends. Doing stuff like this and actually enjoying it!’
‘You’re here with your family?’
‘Mum and Dad. Not my sisters. They’re older . . . they’re doing their own thing this summer. Well, Hannah’s working.’
He listens while I talk about them. He has gorgeous brown eyes. He’s incredibly handsome. I wonder what Bonnie or Hannah would think.
I find myself telling him more than I meant to, little by little.
‘The worst thing is that my parents are on the verge of splitting up. The holiday was supposed to make things better, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s made it worse.’ I blink back tears.
Tim puts his arm round my shoulders and hugs me. ‘I’m sorry, Kate.’
I wriggle away, embarrassed.
He doesn’t take any notice. ‘That’s harsh. It really is. But you’ll be OK. Really. It’s happened to so many of us. Thea. Me. It gets easier, believe me. You’ll find that too, given time. But it is very hard to begin with. I understand that.’
I look over at Thea, smiling at something Jamie’s just said. You can’t tell, I’m thinking. No one would know from the outside. Tim, even! I don’t know why that comes as a surprise to me, but it does. For me, it’s like this horrible shameful thing, as if it’s my fault, a weakness in me, something I should have been able to stop . . .
But I can’t say any of that out loud. Not to Tim, not to anyone.
Tim’s still talking. ‘And the best thing to do is to keep busy. Don’t think about it too much. So let’s get that next sack filled and into the jeep.’
Piers starts reciting lines from another poem: ‘Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper,’ he announces pompously. Jamie and Clara join in.
Tim pulls a face and makes me laugh, despite everything.
Back at the Manse, Finn goes straight up to have a bath. So I look after myself. I go along the bookcases, searching for a copy of Wordsworth’s poems. I find the one they were chanting up on the peat beds about the Highland girl singing. I copy my two favourite lines into my notebook:
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Piers smiles when he sees what I’m reading. ‘I’ll find you the Heaney poems about the Bog People too,’ he says.
No one thinks it’s the least bit odd that I’m curled up with a book and a cup of tea, reading poetry. I guess this is how they live all the time. Joy brings in freshly baked cake: fruit tea-bread, and ginger cake with sticky bits. ‘For the workers,’ she says. ‘Tuck in. You’ve all done a great job and I’m very thankful. Now we can heat the Manse all winter.’
I wonder what Dad would say if he saw me here, like this. Pleased, I guess, that at last I’m showing some interest in poetry. And Mum? She’d be envious, more likely, of the company. Like when she talked about watching Finn’s family and friends on the beach, years ago. It looked fun, she said, in that wistful tone. As if she’d wished she could be part of it too.
How isolated Mum and Dad have become. How strange that I’ve not noticed till now how almost all their friends have drifted away . . .
Finn hasn’t reappeared after his bath, and as I’m here as his guest, it makes me feel a bit odd. Should I go home now? But no one seems to be bothered about me still being here, and it’s cosy and friendly and much nicer than walking back to the house, not knowing what I’ll find when I get there.
Eventually Alex and Joy invite me to stay for supper, so I do. Finn comes downstairs at last. He doesn’t pay me any particular attention. Tim does though. He makes sure I feel at home. He sits next to me and chats about his job in publishing. He’s a sales representative, selling books to supermarkets. He travels all the time.
He’s grown-up, with a proper job and a flat and a car and everything, but he’s kind, not scary or showing off how clever he is, like the others do a bit. Not Finn, I don’t mean, because he’s not clever-clever in an academic way. Though the way Finn talks about the island, it sometimes seems a bit like he’s lecturing me . . .
‘I can take you home after dinner if you like,’ Tim says.
Thea looks up: she watches us for a while.
Tim notices her watching. ‘Want to come with me to take Kate home?’ he asks her.
She shakes her head. ‘Ask Finn,’ she says.
But he’s busy, it seems. Other things to do. Perhaps it’s just a signal to me: that he’s not interested in me that way. It feels a bit like a snub, but I know I am overly sensitive about these things. So Molly always says.
It’s actually rather nice being driven by Tim in his big estate car. He drives slowly and carefully: very different from Piers. He talks a bit more about his work. He drives around the country selling books. He’s travelled all over the world, but he loves it here on this island more than anywhere else, even the most exotic places.
‘Really?’ I say. ‘What, even more than the Seychelles or the Caribbean?’
‘Yes!’ he says. ‘Even more than those.’
The car bumps over the cattle grid. Tim carries on talking. ‘How about you? What job might you do when you grow up, Kate?’
Those two little words – grow up – make me cringe. He thinks I’m just a child.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I say. ‘It’s too hard to know what I could do. Like there must be loads of jobs I haven’t even heard of. I don’t know how you find out.’ I look at him. ‘Did you always know what you wanted to be?’
He laughs as if I’ve said something hilarious. ‘A lifelong ambition to be a sales rep, you mean?’
I shrug.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I wanted to be a writer or a broadcast journalist.’
‘And do you still?’
He looks at me, still faintly amused. ‘Well, of course. You don’t stop dreaming, just because you’ve grown up! Haven’t your parents told you that?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘They don’t tell me anything.’
That shuts him up. And in any case we’ve arrived, and he’s parking up on the grassy verge near the house. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, when the engine’s stopped. He puts his hand on my shoulder lightly. ‘I touched a raw nerve. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘I’m not upset,’ I lie. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ I shut the car door and walk away quickly.
Dad’s in his usual seat at the window. He looks as if he’s about to say something, but I go straight upstairs before he can.
I lie on my bed. Stare through the low window at the framed square of sea, rock, grass, sky. Gradually I calm down.
I know a bit about what Dad’s dreams used to be because of what Mum told me the other day when we were on the beach. And Mum? She wanted lots of children: the family she didn’t have as a child. I remember her telling me ages ago that for a while she’d thought of having her own business . . . something like a community family centre, where people could come together to play and meet each other, with a café and a toys and books library, and classes for children and adults to learn how to make things, or dance or play music. Only she couldn’t work out how to earn money that way.
And what about me, and my dreams?
All I ever wanted was for Mum and Dad to sort things out and stay together. Us be a family. Just for things to be OK. It didn’t seem much to ask.
I did have this silly fantasy about Sam and me, once upon a time, going off together on some kind of adventure: travelling, I suppose, seeing the world and meeting different kinds of people – I was a bit vague about the details. Sam was always talking about getting away – being free. I didn’t think about how you get to do those things, about how you pay for them, or any of the practical stuff. I didn’t ever tell Sam about it even. It seems ridiculous now.