Her cousin was sitting by her bed on one of those hard plastic chairs, reading a magazine. Jen lay still and watched her. She was dressed as a nun, but only on the top half – the wimple and a pale blue cotton top that no one would ever wear unless they had to for religious reasons. On her bottom half she was wearing jeans.
She must have felt Jen’s gaze because she looked up from Hello! magazine and smiled.
“You’ve woken up,” she said.
Jen had never heard her speak before. She smiled back.
“You’ve had quite a time of it, you poor thing.”
Her voice reminded Jen of weeping willows and slow flowing rivers, cathedrals filled with air. She tried breathing deeply, but the breaths turned into sobs.
Her cousin reached out and took her hand. Her palm was cool, her fingers light against the back of Jen’s hand. The sobs subsided into a series of sniffs.
“They want to discharge you,” said her cousin. “I think they need the bed. But they’re concerned that you’ve given them no details.”
“I didn’t want them to phone Mum.”
“Why don’t you phone Barbara? You could stay with her for a while.”
“Is Aunt Barbara your mother?”
“She’d love to have you. The island would be a good place to recuperate.”
“Did she have you first, before Grace and Lyddie? Did you die?”
“Shhh. The nurse is coming.”
The cousin let go of Jen’s hand. She got up and walked quickly away down the ward, where she sat in a chair by the bed of a sleeping patient and carried on reading her magazine.
The nurse appeared by Jen’s bed.
“Well young lady, how are you feeling after your long sleep?”
“Hungry.”
“Hungry is good. We’ll get you some food brought up. You have a bit more colour in your cheeks.”
The lotus flower. She couldn’t feel it anymore. There was nothing jabbing into her side. No bloodstained petals. No nausea.
“Did I lose it?”
“I’m afraid so, love.”
“I’d like to phone my aunt.”
“Your aunt. Good, good. Do you have a mobile?”
“It’s out of battery.”
“I’ll get a phone brought to you. Now, you need to swallow these.”
The nurse handed her a glass of water and four pills, two white and two that looked like rabbit pellets. Jen took them. She could feel them in her oesophagus, following a line from her mouth to her stomach, a hard lump that wasn’t quite pain. She lay back against the pillows.
“I’m still tired,” she said to the nurse.
“I’m not surprised, you lost a lot of blood. You’ll need to rest for a while.”
When the nurse came back ten minutes later with a phone and a cheese salad sandwich, the cousin slipped under the bed. The nurse stood by while Jen phoned her aunt. Except that she didn’t really phone her aunt; she phoned Finn and spoke to his turned-off phone.
“Hello Aunt Barbara, it’s Jen.”
“I’m fine. Well no, actually I’m not. I’m in hospital.”
“Nothing serious. I’m about to leave.”
“Well, mum doesn’t know I’m here. She’s really busy with this convention coming up. I wondered if I could come and stay with you for a while.”
“I’ll get the train. I’ll be fine.”
“Thank you. That’s really good of you.”
“I know. Can I phone her when I get to yours?”
The nurse watched her for the whole conversation. Jen had never been good at acting, but she thought she’d pulled it off. The nurse was smiling approvingly. Jen could hear breathing from under the bed.
I can smell heather. I can smell the sea. I can smell clay. I can smell cowshit. I can see nothing. Not darkness, not mist. I don’t know if I have a body. I can feel nothing.
I can smell nettles. I can smell oatcakes. I can smell salt. I can smell heather.
What is a person with no sense but smell? Am I a person?
I try to hear. I try to listen. Even if my cells have dispersed, they must still exist. All matter continues to exist. My cells must be oscillating, ringing the airwaves with sound. I must be able to hear something.
How can I try to hear when I have no body, no ears?
But I can smell.
I can smell heather. I can smell fish. I can smell gorse. I can smell green tea, chamomile tea, white tea, black tea, oolong tea, jasmine tea.
“Otter spraints.”
I want to call back. What? What? Otter spraints? What does that mean?
I have no voice. I can smell jasmine tea, white petals, green leaves floating.
“Otter spraints. That’s what otter poo is called. It smells of jasmine tea.”
I remember seeing. Colour. Light. Water. Rocks. A footpath through heather. A person ahead of me with bare feet, walking.
I remember, I want to say. But I have no voice.
I can see nothing. The voice doesn’t speak again.
I can smell jasmine tea. I can smell otter spraints. I can smell heather. I can smell skin. I can smell sea. I remember the island.
When Jen left the hospital, her cousin was waiting in the carpark.
“You didn’t phone Barbara, did you?” was the first thing she said.
“How…?”
“I know Barbara. She’d have asked a lot more questions. She’d have said, why don’t you phone your dad.”
“I don’t want a fuss.”
“Your dad wouldn’t make a fuss. He’d just drive up here and get you.”
“Yes, and take me back home, and Mum and Terence would be there, and Mum would go on about how inconvenient it was and how selfish I am, and Dad would slope off to the pub.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Look, I just don’t want to, OK? I’m an adult. I can do this on my own.”
“Well, all I can say is it’s a good thing I’m here to look after you.”
“Thank you. It was nice to meet you and talk to you at last.”
They stood facing each other, neither of them moving. The cousin had an obstinate look on her face that was strangely familiar.
“I’m going now. Thank you for visiting me.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“I may not have really phoned, but I’m really going. I’m getting the train to Scotland.”
“I’m coming too.”
Jen thought about the journey; the train from York to Edinburgh, the shuttle to Glasgow, then the long winding journey up to the highlands and the ferry to the island. It was a long way, and whatever she’d told the nurse, she was feeling a bit shaky. It might be nice to have some company.
“Well, if you’re coming with me you may as well tell me your name,” she said.
The cousin smiled. Her brown eyes glowed and she was as beautiful as a film star. She held out her hand to Jen.
“My name is Ethie. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Jen took her hand and they shook solemnly, then burst into peals of laughter. For the first time in weeks, Jen thought the summer might be alright.
Jen had only been to visit her aunt once before. She was sixteen and coming up to her GCSEs. She’d stopped eating and her mother didn’t know what to do with her. Aunt Barbara had phoned one evening when Donna was at the end of her tether. Her dad had done his usual and gone to the pub to get out of the way. After he’d gone, Jen had found a paper bag in her room with a vanilla slice in it. They’d always been her favourite cakes. She smiled; that was Dad all over. You thought he hadn’t noticed, then he did something like that. She sat on her bed and listened to her mother’s voice in the hallway.
“She sits at the table and looks at the food – won’t even pick up her knife and fork. I said, if you get hungry enough you’ll eat it, you’re not going to just starve yourself to death. I know you’re not that stupid. But it seems as though she is. I don’t think she’s eaten anything for a week now. Only water.”
That wasn’t true. Jen had eaten something. She’d got up in the middle of the night and grabbed a handful of cereal from the box. It had been so dry it made her gag.
The paper bag had stuck to the icing. She slid her finger along the cream layer, looked at it, then put it into her mouth. Sweetness flooded over her tongue.
Downstairs, her mum was saying, “I wouldn’t have time to drive her. There’s a big weekend at the Church coming up. She’d have to go by train.”
The following day she had travelled by herself to Scotland.
She remembered the shock of the Northumberland coastline, the beauty of Berwick-upon-Tweed, of southern Scotland. She’d seen pictures of the Highlands and the islands; she had expected the scenery to be breathtaking when she got that far north. But nobody had told her about this barren, windswept land.
“Ethie,” she said in the station foyer, “how about we stop off on the way?” She wondered what colour her cousin’s hair was under the wimple.
“Jen, you’ve just come out of hospital. You need looking after.”
“I’m fine,” Jen said.
Ethie frowned.
“Nothing mad. Just a little break. A night or two.”
“That’s long enough for things to go wrong.”
“I have my phone. There’s always 999. And I won’t need it because I’m fine.”
Jen thought she wouldn’t mention the dead battery in her phone, or that it felt like someone was scraping the inside of her thighs with blunt fingernails and wringing out her guts.
“Where were you thinking of?” Ethie said.
“Berwick-upon-Tweed.”
Ethie looked up sharply.
“It’s so beautiful. I saw it from the train last time, and I wanted to get off and stay there but I couldn’t because Aunt Barbara was expecting me.”
Ethie didn’t say anything.
“My brother went walking on the northeast coast. He started in Berwick. We might find him.”
Ethie looked up at the departures board.
“It’s good to explore new places. Be impulsive.”
“It’s not new to me,” Ethie said quietly. “I’ve been to Berwick before.”
She turned and walked to the ticket office where she bought two tickets to Oban.
“Would it be OK if we broke the journey?” she asked the girl behind the glass screen.
The girl looked at the nun in jeans and smiled.
“No worries. As long as you complete the journey within the calendar month.”
Ethie handed the tickets to Jen, who put them in her pocket.
“Thanks, Ethie,” she said.
Jen sat uncomfortably in her train seat. She shifted from one buttock to another, and each time there was a gush of blood. She’d put on her only pair of blue jeans; all her other trousers were white.
After Durham she got up to go to the toilet, but she was overcome with dizziness and sat down again.
“You OK?” said Ethie.
“Tired.”
She dozed for a while. Newcastle passed in a haze of lights. The noise of people getting on and off, the train whistle. Through the thin skin of her eyelids she was dimly aware of Ethie sitting upright on the other side of the table. Her hands were in her lap, her gaze fixed on the view through the window, her nun’s veil framing her face, bare of makeup and shining with health. Jen was pleased she was there and let herself drift off.
She was woken by a sharp pain. She sat up and opened her eyes. Ethie smiled at her.
“Trains go so fast, don’t they? Look, we’re nearly at Berwick already.”
Jen put her hands on her belly. A line puckered Ethie’s forehead but she smoothed it away.
“You’re looking a bit pale,” she said. “Maybe you do need the sea air.”
The train pulled into Berwick station. As they stood up to disembark, Jen’s legs bucked and Ethie had to hold her arm as they walked down the aisle.
On the platform, Jen said, “I need to find the toilets,” but before Ethie could reply, the world went black.
When she came to, Jen was sitting on a bench and a woman she’d never seen before had her arm round her shoulders.
“Hello love,” the woman said.
There were a few people on the platform, waiting for trains, some of them casting curious glances in their direction.
“You fainted, pet,” said the woman. “Your friend’s gone to get you some hot tea and a taxi.”
Jen nodded and relaxed. For a moment she’d thought Ethie had abandoned her, gone back to whatever realm she’d come from. She didn’t bother wondering where they were getting a taxi to. She leaned against the woman and closed her eyes. The pain had subsided, but she felt as though her limbs were made of lead.
“Jen, try to drink some of this.”
Ethie held a paper cup to Jen’s lips. Jen didn’t take it from her; she let her cousin tip the cup, felt the hot sweet liquid run over her tongue, managed a swallow.
“Thank you.” Her voice came out in a breathy whisper.
The woman stood up.
“Are you two going to be OK? Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor?”
“She’s just come out of hospital.”
“Oh pet, someone should have collected youse in a car. You shouldn’t be travelling around on trains.”
“There was a flower,” Jen said.
“What, pet?”
“A white flower. Inside me. It was beautiful but the petals came apart, and it bled.”
The woman frowned. “Are you sure she’s...”
“It’s OK,” Ethie interrupted. “I’ve got us a taxi. I’ll look after her.”
The woman looked hard at Ethie, at her wimple, her young bare face, her jeans and trainers, and said, “Get her into bed as soon as you can, and don’t do any more travelling for a while.”