Sand trickles on to the floor when I pull on my jeans the next morning. I peer at my face in the mirror: freckles all over my nose, hair sticky with salt, frizzy from last night’s damp air. I stick out my tongue at my reflection. No one is ever going to look at me the way Matt looks at Izzy. Why would they? Stupid me, getting all worked up like that. Matt belongs to Izzy. Izzy is my friend. End of story.
I wonder what Mum and Dad are doing right now. It’s about nine; they could be waking up together in their big bed, drinking tea, planning a day out, just the two of them . . .
More likely Dad left early for work, and Mum’s listening to Radio 4 in the kitchen, staring at the walls and trying to summon up some energy to unpack the boxes still untouched in the empty rooms in the rented house. Perhaps they’ve already decided to part: that’s why she let me come here for the summer, so she and Dad can sort it all out, and when they see me at the end of the summer they’ll tell me it’s all decided and there’ll be nothing I can do about it. Perhaps she’s leafing through house details, small poky houses in the cheap end of town near the station, which is all she’ll be able to afford with her share of the money from the house sale. And Dad . . .
Just a difficult patch, Izzy said. Everyone has those. It might not be as bad as you think . . .
Miranda says I have this habit of exaggerating things. It is true that sometimes I do imagine things so vividly I start to believe they must be true. And I have been spectacularly wrong in the past. But the opposite is also true: that I see what I hope to see, sometimes, and convince myself that things are better than they actually are. Which leaves me precisely where?
Nowhere, of course. Stop thinking, Freya.
I fish out the stash of postcards I keep tucked in my notebook. I choose one with a picture of the standing stone on Gara: it’s important there’s no sea in the picture, no boats or anything to set Mum off, and I start to write.
Hi Mum and Dad
Thinking about you. Hope the move went OK and you like the new house and everything. Miss you.
I cross out and everything. I re-read the rest. My words sound distant and empty. I can’t begin to tell them what it’s like here this summer. I wish I could tell Mum about the dreams, and the remembering, and what it’s really like being here without Joe. I realise it’s days since I spoke to either of them.
Soon as I’ve posted the card I start walking towards the maze on Wind Down. It’s not beach weather, though it might be later, if the sun manages to burn through the sea mist. It suits my mood: soft grey light, muffled sounds. Every so often the fog horn booms out over the island. You wouldn’t want to be out in a boat in this. My feet take me round, back, round, in towards the centre of the labyrinth. I close my eyes and sway, slightly.
My questions about Joe’s accident have been in my head for so long it’s wearing me out. It’s building in my skull like a pressure, like a physical weight pushing down. I don’t know how to stop it or let it out. I wonder if it feels like this when you’re going crazy. Am I? Crazed by grief: I read it, somewhere. It really happens. I’m still no closer to an answer.
I carry on walking across the downs, along the cliff edge, seeing how close I can get, checking how easy it’d be to step over in a mist like this. But it’s not hard to tell when you get close: the air quality changes, and there are gaps in the mist, and it’s not so dense now anyway.
It’s quite strange, walking into the white-grey dampness. It closes in around me. I’ve no sense of being on an island now: I can’t hear the sea even though I’m so close. Droplets of moisture cling to my hair and my clothes. I feel separate, totally alone.
It’s not exactly spooky but my senses are all on edge, maybe because the usual clues aren’t there. And perhaps that leaves me wide open to what happens next. Perhaps it explains why I don’t freak out or anything, when I see a figure, down on the rocks.
This time I know it isn’t Danny, even though he’s about the same size. This time it’s a completely different feeling from before, when I thought I saw him fishing from the rocks at Periglis. It’s what I’ve been waiting for, longing for, ever since I arrived on the island. I know, clearly and absolutely, that it’s Joe. But it’s not like I expected.
He’s wearing his old blue jacket, the collar turned up. He’s got his hands in his pockets, and he’s jumping from rock to rock, going along in the same direction as me. Because of the mist, I see him in snatched glimpses. We’re walking in parallel, me up here on the cliff, and him below at sea level. It’s my brother Joe exactly like he was last summer before anything happened. There’s nothing hurt or damaged about him.
I’m not going to ask how this can happen. I’m not going to call out, or run up and touch him, or anything like that. I just keep walking steadily on, and looking, each time the mist swirls and clears a gap, and gradually this extraordinary feeling of calm comes over me.
He is all right.
I haven’t lost him for ever.
He’s here, with me.
He doesn’t look up. There’s nothing to show he’s noticed me, even, although I’m totally sure he knows I’m here. It’s why he’s there, of course. And then, the next time the mist clears enough for me to see, I realise he’s disappeared again. He’s not there any more.
I won’t ever tell anyone else about this. I’m not going to let them say you imagined it, Freya: of course there was nothing there. How could there be? People too easily take things away from you that they don’t understand and can’t explain.
By the time I’ve gone past the fishing rock, the mist has begun to lift. The sounds come back too: gulls, the murmuring of water on stone, the chit chit sound of a bird tapping a shell against a rock. I find a sheltered place to sit, and lean back against the wind-smoothed side of a granite boulder. I close my eyes and breathe in the sweet smell of damp grass and crushed wild thyme.
Thank you, Joe.
I sit there thinking about him for a long time. I stop feeling the cold air and the damp, even. It was him. He came. He was fine. Is that what it means? He was showing me he’s all right? That I can stop worrying about him?
‘Hey! Freya!’
Danny’s mooching along the path, fishing rod and bucket in hand. His voice breaks the spell. I’ve been sitting there by myself for so long I’m pleased to see him, though I don’t let on. The mist has almost completely cleared.
‘You’re all wet!’ he says. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just sitting.’
‘Did you hear the fog horn, earlier? Warning ships?’
‘I did.’
Danny sort of hops one foot to the other, a bit nervous. ‘Want to do something?’ he says.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Just hang out together, I guess.’
I shrug. ‘If you like.’
‘Where shall we go?’
I stand up. I’ve been hunched there for ages and my legs feel all tingly and weird. It makes me laugh.
‘What?’
‘Pins and needles.’ I explain. ‘From sitting still too long.’
I get an idea, suddenly. ‘If you want,’ I say, ‘I’ll take you somewhere special. As long as you promise to keep it a secret. If I can find it.’
‘OK.’ He sounds a bit wary, doubtful.
‘You’ll have to follow behind me, once we find the path. It’s very narrow.’
Path is a bit of an exaggeration. You’d never find it in a million years without someone showing you. I first came here about three years ago with Joe. I find it eventually, by a sort of instinct, clambering along the big rocks, ducking under a stone arch and squeezing through the narrow gap between two huge boulders. It’s a bit like caving except not underground: there are places which are so narrow you have to suck your breath in and half crawl. I was smaller – shorter – last time I came. It’s more difficult than I remember.
Danny’s huffing and puffing behind me, protesting.
‘Trust me,’ I say, turning back to grin at him.
We come out on a ledge about halfway down the cliff, and edge along that, round the next curve, and then at last we can drop down another level on to granite rocks, just above a narrow inlet which at low tide makes a small triangular beach of silver sand, totally hidden except from the sea. And on this side of the island you hardly ever see boats close in. It’s much too dangerous.
I jump the last metre or so and Danny follows. Our feet leave deep prints in the wet sand.
‘Wow!’ Danny says. ‘Amazing!’
‘Worth the effort?’
‘Definitely.’
We take off our shoes. You can’t possibly stay wearing shoes on a pristine, perfect beach like this, where you’re the first people to leave footprints. We run around a bit crazily and then flop down in a heap, breathless.
‘How did you find this beach?’
‘My brother found it. We never saw anyone else here, ever. We’ve never told anyone about it. So you must keep it a secret.’
‘Of course!’ Danny’s face glows. He looks at me and smiles, properly. ‘Thanks, Freya!’
The sun’s beginning to burn through the low cloud.
‘Should’ve brought swimming things,’ Danny says.
I pick up a pebble and start drawing patterns in the damp sand. Danny finds a funny bit of seaweed like a donkey’s tail and tries to stick it on me, and we end up having a seaweed fight, and get covered in sand. I laugh and laugh and it feels brilliant. We roll our jeans up and paddle in the shallows. I love the feeling of the water running back out under my toes. Danny finds a crab and then I do too and we try and make them have races, only they just make for the nearest rock and hide.
We poke around in the rock pools. We sit next to the biggest one, side by side, staring in.
‘I heard about your brother,’ Danny blurts out.
I poke at a sea-anemone, feel its tentacles pulling at my finger, trying out if I’m edible. I bite down on my lip, hard.
Danny’s shadow falls over the pool and a tiny sand goby flashes back under the weed. ‘Izzy told me. I wanted you to know that I knew, if you see what I mean. Like, I didn’t want it to be secret.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much. That your brother was in some sort of accident, and he died, and it was only last year.’ Danny looks at me, waiting.
Normally I’d clamp up right there and then. Run off. Something. But I don’t. Maybe it’s because of what happened earlier, in the mist. Or maybe it’s because we’re sitting together on this secret beach which is mine and Joe’s special place, and I feel safe. Or maybe I’m just ready, at last, to speak about it instead of keeping it all locked in my own head, going round and round and round.
I start to tell Danny the story. Just the bare bones, what happened on the last evening. And it isn’t hard, not once I start.