She stood with her toes pushed in the sand and tried to make sense of the lighthouses. Just offshore was the Fidra lighthouse, sticking up from the small knuckle of land that inspired Treasure Island. Beyond that was the blinking light from the Isle of May, then to her right was the beacon on the Bass Rock, a shadowy lump in the gloom.
She’d spent plenty of time on Yellowcraigs Beach over the years, living up the road in Dirleton. Tonight she was in her usual spot, away from where kids sat and got stoned round campfires. In all her visits, she’d never managed to get the lighthouse signals to synch up. She had a feeling they would mean something if she could just decode their timings and ratios, some great truth would be revealed. She’d looked up their patterns online, but that information didn’t correlate with what she saw.
Four flashes spaced out to her left, longer blinks from further away, a more hesitant glimmer from the Bass Rock. She opened her eyes wide, maybe the light would go directly to her brain and solve it. Cure her. But that was a fantasy, nothing would cure what was spreading through her synapses. She’d been offered chemo and radiotherapy treatments, aggressive invasions trying to stop her cells from killing themselves. But she’d seen how that was for Rosie, still felt the visceral sickness at the memory of her daughter, bald and sunken-eyed in a hospital bed, defeated.
She breathed deeply, tried to calm her heart. She had to pull herself back to what she was doing here. She looked at the sky. This far away from streetlights it was bristling with stars, shimmering freckles above the Firth of Forth, the moon blazing a trail across the water. She spotted Jupiter and maybe Saturn, the peachy tinge of Mars. So beautiful, yet so far away.
The gentle shush of the sea brought her back to earth. She saw the rockpools in the sweep of the Fidra beam, like shadows of sea creatures hunching their way onto land. She turned to the heap of large stones next to her.
She crouched and began placing the stones in her pockets. She wore loose yoga pants and felt stupid as the pockets started to bulge. She tied the waistband tight to make sure they didn’t fall down. She stuffed rocks into her hoodie pockets too, then zipped them up. The weight was already making her hunch. Over the hoodie was a fleece, three more zip pockets, one each side and one on the left breast. She filled them in turn, closed them. They would be hard to open in a panic.
She felt stupid with the weight, an ancient lumbering beast, soon extinct. She walked with a cumbersome gait to the water. It wasn’t far but each step was slow progress.
She stopped at the edge of the water, heard the ripple and slurp. She looked at the expanse of sea, the yellow lights of North Berwick to her right. She looked behind her at the beach where she’d been most days for the last twenty years. Single, married, pregnant, a mum, a grieving woman, divorced, a terminal brain tumour patient.
Now she was just Heather, ready to go. She’d had enough.
She stepped into the icy water, the material of the trousers clinging to her skin. The shock jolted her chest but she breathed through it, kept walking, felt her trouser pockets enter the water, the weight pulling her down. She was up to her waist, then her hoodie and fleece were soaked. She felt so heavy, like she was a rock herself, part of the rockpool alongside her. She’d been here for millennia, waiting for this. Anxiety rose in her chest but she stepped forward, the sand soft under her feet as she sank but kept going, up to her chest, neck. It got deep quickly in this stretch, that’s why she’d chosen it. She instinctively raised her chin to keep her mouth above the surface, kept walking and stretching her neck.
Between the flashes from Fidra, she sensed another light to her left, a glow shifting from aquamarine to teal, getting brighter until it was fierce. She saw a glaring ball of fire streak across the sky, ripping between her and Fidra, a crackle and fizz in her ears, a glimmering trail of sparkles in its wake as it tore into the sea a hundred yards away.
She waited for waves or steam or an explosion, but the night was silent and dark. She stood like that for a long time, the pull of the rocks in her pockets, the push of the water against her body. Then she stepped forward and there was no more sand under her feet. She tried to swim, arms beating the water, but the weight made her head sink under. She thrashed back to the surface, gasped in air, sank again. She stretched her toes, feeling for the seabed to kick against, but there was nothing. She began trying to remove her clothes, but her fingers fumbled. She tried to unzip a pocket, but the zip stuck as she yanked. She heaved her arms and legs in the water and rose for a moment, gasped in air, smelled something like scones which confused her, then sank again.
She opened her eyes underwater and they stung, the sand and seaweed she’d kicked up making it like she was drowning in soup. She felt dizzy, unsure which way was up, then vomited, the bile drifting away from her face as she sucked in sea water against every impulse in her body.
She lost all energy and stopped thrashing, her vision spinning and limbs like lead. Then she saw something in front of her, a tangle of bright seaweed but more solid, the same blue-green colour as the light in the sky. It came closer, arms reaching out and holding her, squeezing her, like a hug from her daughter. Finally she could give up fighting and rest.