Isla and Tim are out of the sea and dressed. They’re sitting around with everyone else, eating sausage sandwiches. They aren’t holding hands or anything obvious, but you can tell there’s something going on between them. I can, anyway. Poor Finn, I think briefly.
‘Help yourself to food,’ Piers says with his mouth full. ‘Luckily we left you some.’
‘We assumed Finn was with you,’ Thea says.
‘He was.’ I pick up a bread roll and spread it thickly with butter. ‘But he wanted to walk on further. The next bay or something. And I was starving, so I came back.’
Everyone’s a bit tired after last night. No one says much. I finish my sandwich, help put things away. Finn still isn’t back. No one takes much notice.
Mid-morning, a Land Rover bumps slowly down the track: Rob’s friend the mechanic. He says hello to Isla. He knows her, of course. ‘Quite a night you had, I hear!’
Isla introduces him: his name is Mackie. She goes with him and Tim to inspect the jeep engine. The rest of us doze in the sun. The day heats up. Voices drift across the sand.
By lunchtime Mackie’s whistling and making jokes and Tim looks a whole lot happier. They come over for a cup of tea.
‘Mackie’s a total miracle worker,’ Tim says. ‘The jeep’s going to be all right.’
‘Happened to have all the spare parts, that’s all,’ Mackie says. ‘Just don’t mention it to anyone else, me working today.’
‘Sunday,’ Isla explains. ‘No one’s supposed to work on a Sunday. Not even cut peat or go shopping.’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘That must be really annoying.’
‘It’s actually a good idea,’ she says, ‘if you think about it. Spending a day with your family and friends instead of working. Those relationships are at the heart of an island community: the bonds that tie people and make them care about each other and help each other in difficult times. Without that, the island wouldn’t survive.’
It feels as if she’s telling me off.
Finn’s still not back. No one seems bothered. It’s not unusual, I guess. He often disappears off to do his own thing. I listen to Mackie talking: he seems to like having an audience. He’s not as old as he first seemed. He’s got the leathery face of someone who’s outside in all weathers, but it turns out he’s only a bit older than Tim. He’s a fisherman as well as a mechanic. Everyone on the island has at least two jobs.
‘Apart from the incomers with their holiday homes,’ he says. ‘They don’t do much useful; just bellyache about stuff. Like all the fuss about the fish and chip van. The generator keeping the holidaymakers awake at night or some such nonsense. So now we don’t have a fish ’n’ chip van at all and we’re all the losers.’ He grins at Isla.
He tells us he’s never lived anywhere but here. He went to the local school, he worked with his dad and his uncle at the garage, he learned to fish with his grandad.
‘What do you think about the wind farm project?’ I ask him.
Isla glances at me, but she doesn’t say anything.
‘Hah! Politicians!’ Mackie says scornfully. ‘They cook up these schemes and they’ve never even set foot in the place. They don’t have the foggiest about how their schemes will affect normal people, change a way of life that’s been handed down for generations. They muck about with it all from their smart city office on a bit of paper – or a computer screen these days, most likely. Plans and maps and graphs and statistics, and it all looks grand and ticks all the boxes about renewables and green this and energy that and European funding other. And all of it means nothing if you haven’t ever lived in a place like this, or been on a boat in a storm, or tried to walk along the road in wind when it’s hurricane force.’ He laughs. ‘Politician bloke came up from Edinburgh in his suit and spent the day on a ferry that couldn’t land because of the waves and the wind blowing a southeasterly. He spent eight hours at sea in a storm and he went all the way back again to Edinburgh the next day without ever setting foot on the island! You’d think that would teach him something.’
‘Why don’t more people speak out against the plans?’ Thea asks.
‘Island people have a long history of having to accept what’s done to them. They’ll complain about it enough afterwards, mind you. And some of the more mouthy incomers are against it for their own reasons, which puts normal folk off.’
‘You have to think about why people move over here,’ Isla says. ‘Quite often they’re people running away from something. People who aren’t so good at getting on with others, they don’t understand how a real community works.’ She laughs. ‘They forget that they bring themselves with them, wherever they run.’
I wonder what Finn would say to that.
Mackie nods. ‘And the fact is, nothing stands still. Things do have to change; people have to adapt. But not all change is good. You have to think about each thing on its own merit. Not accept everything.’
Isla looks as if she’s going to argue, but she doesn’t.
Thea and Piers start packing up the sleeping bags and cooking things. The party’s properly over. Jamie and Clara decide to have one final swim before they make their way back to the Manse.
‘Anyone else coming in? Thea? Kate?’ Clara asks.
Thea shakes her head.
‘Sea’s too cold for me,’ I say. ‘And I should be going home.’
I get my stuff together, say goodbye.
Tim gives me a big bear hug. ‘Thanks for the cake, clever Kate,’ he says. ‘Thanks for being here, celebrating my birthday.’
‘I’ll never forget it.’
‘Me neither!’ Tim laughs. ‘Nearly destroyed thousands of pounds worth of jeep.’
‘I meant the Northern Lights,’ I say. ‘And the beautiful beach, and being with everybody . . .’
I wheel the bike the long way, up the track towards the road.
Going home, I said. But it’s just a holiday house, Fiona’s house. I’m not sure I’ll ever really be going home again. I think about what Isla said about running away. The sort of people who want to move to an island to live, rather than the ones born and raised there. You have to ask what they’re running from, she said. What they are trying to leave behind. Because we take ourselves with us, wherever we go, however far and remote.
One of those random thoughts pops up: Home is where the heart is. It’s a quotation from something: no idea what.
Maybe some people get born in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or to the wrong parents. Or they end up marrying the wrong person, or being in the wrong job, and they have to spend a lifetime finding their way back to where they ought to be.
Where the heart is.
I cycle slowly back. Away from the shelter of the dunes the wind is stronger, blowing against me. As I come down the last slope into the village and past the shop, I see Mum outside the house, pegging washing on the line, even though it is a Sunday. The clothes flap and dance: she’s finding it hard to keep the pegs on the line the wind’s so strong. Her skirt, hair – everything’s tugged sideways by the wind. It’s comforting and familiar, this little scene: a snapshot of ordinary life.
I smile, she waves. I pedal across the bumpy ground to the gate and get off.
‘How was it?’ she calls. ‘Have a lovely time?’
‘Amazing,’ I say. I wheel the bike through the gate and lean it against the white wall of the house. ‘Guess what? We saw the Northern Lights!’
‘No! In summer? You lucky things! I’ve always wanted to see that. I can’t believe we missed it! Tell me about it.’ She picks up the empty washing basket and we go inside together.
Mum clicks on the kettle for coffee and brings her two new cups from the draining board over to the table. It feels like a normal day; we could be living here like this together, and it wouldn’t be strange at all. A glimmer of all the possibilities ahead comes into my head: all the choices you can make about where to live, and how, and with whom.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask.
‘Birdwatching, walking,’ she says. ‘Having some thinking time.’
We sip coffee. I hold the cup up in both hands so I can see the hares running round. I describe the Northern Lights to her, but it’s hard to explain exactly what it felt like, watching the sky from the beach in the middle of the night: the feeling of wonder, and the rightness of it all.
Mum stands up and goes to the window. ‘We phoned Bonnie and Hannah last night,’ she says. She’s looking away, as if she can’t bear to see my face. ‘We felt we should. It didn’t seem fair, you being the only one knowing about Dad and me. You should be able to talk to each other about it if you want to.’
It’s another blow, soft and deadly. What had I expected? That they might have changed their minds? Decided that it wasn’t too late to reconsider?
‘What did they say?’
‘They were both upset, of course. Bonnie especially. She wants to come home. We tried to persuade her not to. She’s been having such a good time in Spain, it seems a shame to cut that short.’
‘She could come here,’ I say. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Me too.’ Mum sighs. She comes back to the table and sits down. ‘It’s such a mess,’ she says. ‘So not what I wanted for my daughters. I’m so sorry, Kate.’
Too late, Mum. You should have thought about that before.
My anger surprises me: the way it flares up, blindingly bright and jagged like the pain over my eyes when a migraine starts.
She doesn’t notice. We stare out of the window at the white horses on the waves. ‘It’s blowing up for another storm,’ Mum says. ‘You were lucky, catching that window of fine weather for the party.’
I yawn.
‘Go and get some sleep. I don’t suppose you got much last night.’