I get up in the early evening. Dad comes back soon after, in time for supper. He’s caught the sun: red cheeks, red nose, red neck. He looks happy though. He lists the birds he’s seen. He had a chat in the café at Martinstown with a delightful young couple on their honeymoon . . .
Mum carries on folding and smoothing the washing she’s brought in from the line, dried stiff by the salty wind.
Dad keeps talking. ‘But all in all, I think it’s probably best if I go back home this week. Lots to sort out. Should make a start.’
Mum’s hands stop moving. She doesn’t speak. The clock ticks round.
‘So soon?’ I blurt out. ‘Because I am not going home early.’
Mum still doesn’t say a word.
‘Just me,’ Dad says lightly, as if it doesn’t matter one way or another, as if it’s of no great significance. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to come, Kate.’
‘Good. Because I’m not.’
Mum looks up at last. ‘Kate?’ she says. ‘Could you let me and Dad have a few minutes on our own?’
I snatch up my jacket from the chair, slam the front door behind me.
The wind’s blowing from the west. I walk into it, eyes stinging. I walk along the single track road and down on to the sandy beach with the fringe of marram grass along the top. I start looking for the rock shaped like a bowl that I lay in that first day on the island. Ages ago, it seems, though it’s only a couple of weeks. I can’t find it: the rocks all look the same from a distance.
At last I stumble across it. I climb in, lie down. Only today it doesn’t feel warm, comforting, a resting place. The rock’s cold, hard. Even with my collar up and my hands pulled up inside my sleeves I’m shivering. I turn on to my side, curl up. The stone cuts into my hip.
Dad’s face, set hard. How could he do that? Simply walk away from Mum, and me, and everything we’ve been together as a family? Talk about it so casually, as if he doesn’t care, doesn’t see what he’s doing to the rest of us?
The rational voice in my own head tells me it’s the only way he could do it: a decision, and a turning away. That way he doesn’t have to see the fallout. He can pretend it isn’t happening, because it’s all taking place somewhere else, like a shower of rain falling way out at sea. That he still, somewhere, somehow, loves us.
The one bright thought is Bonnie, on her way home.
It’s too cold and blustery to stay still for long. I walk further along the beach, back up to the road and keep on walking westwards. The sun’s going down: banks of cloud in layers building up over the sea. That’s the direction the wind farm will be. I let myself imagine it: the hundreds of turbines lighting up as the sun sets: a huge forest of giant Christmas trees whirring and humming in the dark.
Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it’s a change that has to happen, and there’s no point resisting.
Finn.
I imagine him and the others sitting round the table, chatting about the party, everyone helping get the dinner ready, switching on the lamps, drawing the curtains. Someone will be lighting the peat stove as the evening cools down. I think about what makes them so strong as a family. And, of course, it’s Alex and Joy, their steady, loving relationship which holds it all together, invisibly. Their love for each other makes a kind of force field around them all: family, friends. It makes everyone feel safe. It keeps back the dark.
The ache inside my heart is almost unbearable tonight.
I’ve walked a long way: three miles at least, because I’ve come to the turn in the road where I waited for Finn and Isla that time before, when we went out on the bikes. Without even thinking about it I take the fork up to the white cottage. Her dad’s van is parked outside, a pile of lobster pots stacked neatly by the side of the house. The wind’s stronger up here: it whistles through the telephone wires, blows a trail of sand across the tarmac and on to the grass. A light’s on inside the cottage.
I knock at the door. I can hear a man’s voice calling out, feet coming downstairs. The door swings open and Isla’s there, her hair wild round her face, her eyes blazing.
‘Is he back? Is there news?’ Her voice is tight with worry.
‘Who?’
Disappointment floods her face.
‘Who are you talking about? What’s happened?’ I ask.
‘Finn. He hasn’t come back. They’ve been out looking for him. I thought you must have come to tell me he’s safe.’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I say.
‘It’s been nearly eleven hours. It’s getting dark. There’s another storm blowing in . . . it’s dangerous walking along the rocks in the dark, when the tide’s up. Joy has an instinct about these things. I’m surprised they didn’t phone you –’
‘There’s no phone at our house.’
‘You must have been the last person to see him, early this morning. Did he say anything? Where he was going?’
‘Just that he was going to walk along to the next beach. He wanted to be by himself. He often does that, doesn’t he?’
‘Was he upset? Think, Kate. It’s really important.’
‘He was quite calm, I think . . . He listened to me, mostly, talking about things. He was nice to me.’
But he was upset about you, Isla, being with Tim –
‘I suppose he was a bit preoccupied.’ I take a deep breath. This is difficult to say. ‘I suppose it might have been hard for him to see you and Tim getting together last night. Swimming together this morning.’
A blast of wind brings the first drops of rain.
‘You’d better come in,’ Isla says.
In the hall light I see her face better: embarrassed, red. She doesn’t like me, I think. She blames me for something, though I can’t imagine what.
Her father steps out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. ‘Any news?’
She shakes her head.
‘You must be Kate,’ he says. He shakes my hand. ‘Heard about you.’
‘I’ll phone Joy again,’ Isla says. ‘It’s been a while since we talked. Anything might have happened by now.’
I wait in the hall while she takes the phone and sits down on a chair to make the call. There are framed black and white photos hung along the wall and up the stairs: boats, and people. Old photos of island houses with thatched roofs and thick walls. A boy holding a large tabby cat. A group of fishermen. A younger version of Isla with hair in plaits, freckles, sitting on the top of a gate with a kite in her hands. No pictures of her mum, I notice. No sign of her. I realise for the first time that she’s never referred to her mother at all.
The worry note in Isla’s voice gets stronger.
I can hear another voice at the end of the line: its rising tone but not the actual words. Isla’s changes, becomes reassuring. ‘He’ll be fine. He needed some time alone, that’s all. Kate’s here. Yes. She said.’
My own heartbeat quickens: I can’t help it, as if worry is contagious or something. Because it seems a bit ridiculous to me, as if they are all massively overreacting. Unless there’s something they all know about Finn. Something I don’t know.
Isla puts her hand over the mouthpiece and turns to me. ‘What were you talking about with Finn? You said he just listened.’
My turn to go red. ‘About me, and a boy called Sam. And about a car accident I was in. But nothing too terrible, honestly. And Finn was very calm and wise. He didn’t seem upset by it. Not at all.’
She goes back to her call. I’m trying to hear both sides of the conversation but it’s impossible. She just says things like yes, no, I don’t think so. Just friends. Yes.
The clock on the wall ticks round. Ten fifteen. Dusk outside. Wind rattling the door.
‘What was he wearing?’ Isla’s asking me.
I try to remember. ‘Jeans. Black T-shirt. Grey top, I think, tied round his waist. Boots.’
But no coat. No waterproofs . . .
He knows this island as well as anybody. There are plenty of places to take shelter. That ruined house where I waited for the rain to stop. Old barns. Boathouses. The old chapel. He’s probably called in on someone; been invited in for supper, just forgotten to let anyone know. They are usually all so relaxed and casual about time at the Manse that I’m surprised they even noticed that Finn hadn’t come home. There must be something else. There has to be. Otherwise, it doesn’t add up.
Isla puts the phone back. Her dad comes into the hall again. ‘Well?’ he asks.
‘No, he still isn’t back.’ She frowns. ‘Where might he go? Any ideas, Kate?’
‘I’ve no idea. You know him much better than I do, Isla.’
‘Yes.’ She sounds irritated. Or maybe afraid.
Her dad reaches for his coat, picks up his keys from the hall table. ‘We’ll go over to the Manse,’ he says. ‘See where they’ve looked already. Give them a hand. We can drop you off on the way, Kate. It’s getting late.’
There’s no room to argue. Isla climbs into the back of the van and I go in the front seat next to her dad. The van stinks of fish, salt water, the sharp, clean smell of metal.
It’s properly dark now, and the clouds make it darker still. We rattle down the track, back along the coast road next to the dunes towards the village. The telephone kiosk is illuminated: a box of light in the dark. The silhouette of a man talking animatedly into the phone is in plain view. My heart sinks. Dad.
Isla’s father brakes and pulls up on the grass. ‘There you go, Kate. Get some sleep. We’ll let you know if there’s any news about the lad.’
‘Thanks,’ I say.
He pulls the van door behind me and it clicks firmly shut. It’s clear to me that I’ve been dismissed. Not needed. Not wanted. Islanders, closing ranks.
I watch the van drive down through the village, over the cattle grid, past the telecom mast and the shop, and the red tail lights fade into the darkness. I can’t bear to go inside the house where Mum will be waiting, alone. Dad still hasn’t seen me luckily: he’s too intent on whoever he’s talking to. Her, I guess: the woman. So instead of walking in, I go straight past the house, cutting across the grass and behind the shop to rejoin the road the other side.
Keep walking.
The west wind is sweeping the heavy clouds over the island and away. The rain will fall elsewhere this time. Every so often there’s a clear patch of sky, enough to glimpse stars, planets, a slice of moon.
Where would Finn go, if he was wanting to hide? Somewhere special to him, that felt safe.
Collay, I think. That island where we collected cockles.
The idea of him rowing across the water in the dark, in the wind, makes me sick to my stomach. He wouldn’t be so stupid. Would he? Please not . . . But, of course, he might have gone over while it was still light, and then the tide would have come in and he would have had to stay there. That would explain everything.
Surely someone would have thought of that already; checked if the boat was missing?
I keep walking into the dark.
I should have gone with him, this morning. I nearly did. If he’d looked as if he’d wanted me to, I would have. But maybe that’s the whole point. When people can’t reach out, that might be when they need you most. You have to be brave enough to push past the closed-off facade . . .
This morning! It seems impossible that this is still the same day.
In my head I suddenly hear Finn’s voice, as loud and clear as if he were standing in front of me. The ringing stone. That first time we ran along the beach together, me huffing and sweating and out of breath. A special place, that’s been there for thousands of years. And it seems more and more possible, the more I think about it. It’s too far from the road for anyone in a car or jeep to have seen him. You’d have to clamber along the rocky shoreline, take a path across fields, along the cliff . . . I try to remember details from the map on the wall in the museum.
Now I’ve got a purpose, a place to head to, I feel much more confident. I convince myself that I’ll be the one to find him, when no one else has. Perhaps Isla doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does. It’s as if I’m being guided by some sort of animal instinct. Thinking the way Finn might. I try to remember more. Past the ruined house, and the field of black cattle, along past the Iron Age fort, called a broch, and the Neolithic cairns . . .
The sound of the sea crashing on to the sand is louder at night. Most of the birds have already roosted, but every so often I hear the lonely call of a curlew or something, echoing across the bay. The light at the end of the pier blinks on, off, on. It shines out across the heaving water. I pull my collar up and put my hands deep in my pockets. The temperature’s dropped. Just as well I am walking fast.
It seems as if it’s all I’ve done for weeks now: walking. You’d think I’d know this small island like the back of my hand, but I still don’t and everything looks different at night. At the church, I take the left fork that takes me across the island at its narrowest point. Not a single car passes me the whole way. The scattered houses are all in darkness, as if everyone is asleep.
At last the ruined house looms ahead, and beyond that, North Bay. The sea is calm this side of the island, out of the wind. I take the narrow path that runs above the beach, round the coast. It’s so dark and silent that I feel I must walk as quietly as I can too, but even so, I startle a bird and it rises up squawking, flapping its big wings as it wheels away.
The clouds are clearing: the patches of starlit sky get bigger, and when the path comes out on to the cliff I glimpse the moon again: a bright silver crescent, already higher in the sky.
I have to pick my way between boulders; the path seems to peter out altogether in places, and then I come out on to a broad spread of cropped grass divided in two by a running stream, a wooden bridge across, and a single house: a traditional one with deep walls and a tarred roof. The windows are shuttered. Imagine living here.
I keep going. The rocks are craggy ahead, dark shapes against the sky: the cairns, possibly, or the outline of the broch. No signposts or anything to help. All I want now is to find him, for it all to be OK. And then sleep.
But it begins to feel ridiculous, the chances of him being out here. Why was I so confident before?
And what if . . . what exactly might I find, if I do find him? Dark thoughts, conjured up by the darkness, swarm in my mind.