I don’t really believe in ghosts. But something must happen after you die. Otherwise, what is the point? It is impossible for me to believe that Joe has just disappeared completely, in an instant. How could someone so alive and funny and maddening and clever and amazing as Joe just vanish? I have thought about this for a whole year, nearly. So what’s going on? Am I just imagining what I want to believe? Conjuring him up out of my imagination? Or could it be that because I’m somehow open to the possibility, he can actually come back, in one way or another? What exactly did happen, back there at the door?
I don’t believe in the white spectre-type ghosts you get in stories, but what if ghosts are something else? Like memories, somehow caught and trapped in time, released by being in certain places where the things first happened. Or what if dead people can actually come back in some way, a spirit version of themselves, the same way they come in dreams, when you’re sleeping?
My heart’s thumping like mad. I’m still holding my breath. I let it out, in a long sigh. The woman next to me stares and I look away, quick, out of the window. Moorland, chimneys, the remnants of derelict tin mines. Deep wooded valleys. Mist, turning to drizzle. Another hour to go. I close my eyes, drift into sleep.
Bit by bit, we’re edging closer.
The drizzle has turned to rain. Slanting sheets of it hit the train windows, run in rivers down the glass. The train is a column of light snaking through a grey landscape.
I get off the train, find my way to the ferry, find a seat where I can leave my bag, and go up on the deck to watch the crew winding in the mooring ropes, pulling up the huge doors. Just before we leave the harbour, a storm warning comes out over the loudspeakers. They give you the option of delaying your journey. Full refund. No one is to stay out on deck. I go back down below.
The ferry creeps along the coast as far as the tip of the peninsula, then it starts ploughing westwards. The rollers come in one long uninterrupted sweep across the Atlantic: there’s nothing between here and America. The ferry begins to pitch and roll. The engines change note. It’s going to take hours, having to go so slow. The ferry creaks and groans and a deep thud shakes through the whole ship each time an extra big wave hits the bows. Joe would love this. We’ve never come across in a storm before. But Joe isn’t here. When I close my eyes, I can’t even see his face.
‘Is it all right?’ A small child’s voice keeps piping from the seat behind me. ‘Is it safe? Are we going to drown?’
Five hours of it, sick bag on my lap, and I get my first glimpse of land. I’ve been watching for ages, rubbing a space in the misted-up window. Land starts as a faint shadow on the horizon, then another: low dark shapes floating on the water. My heart lifts. I love this moment. More and more shapes appear: clearly rocks now, not shadows, and at last the first proper islands. A cluster of white houses, small fields, an empty rain-swept beach. Almost there.
The ferry docks at Main Island. I’m on auto-pilot now, I’ve been travelling for so long. Queue to get off. Go along the harbour. Find the small ferries waiting to take passengers to the outer islands. The boat I want, the Spirit, is moored below stone steps, halfway along the harbour wall. Another queue.
I’ve got my hood up. It’s still raining, though not as hard. I’m still feeling sick, like everyone else. I want to blend in with the crowd, be swept along, unrecognised. But the boat skipper, Dave, knows me instantly. He presses my hand as he helps me on to the boat.
‘Freya! Good to have you back. OK? Bit of a wild crossing, I bet!’
I have to hold back tears. It hits me, suddenly, what it’s going to be like. People knowing. Feeling sorry. Not knowing what to say. It’s hard for everyone; I understand that, I really do. I know why people avoid it altogether, don’t say anything rather than say the wrong thing. There isn’t an easy way through any of this.
A fair-haired boy is doing the tickets. Not Huw, thank goodness. I make myself breathe properly: in, out, steady. People with rucksacks and tents and stuff pile into the boat. Jokes about the weather; camping. I let the voices wash over my head. Dave starts up the engine and the Spirit chugs slowly out of the sheltered harbour and across Broad Sound to St Ailla.
Evie is waiting on the jetty, waving wildly as the Spirit edges in. I wave back. I’m last off the boat. Dave and the boy start loading bags and camping stuff on to the tractor-trailer on the jetty, ready to take it to the campsite at Sally’s farm and the holiday houses round the island. It was Huw’s job, last summer.
The fair-haired boy turns to me. ‘All right?’ he says. ‘Sling your bag on with the others and I’ll bring it up to the house after I’ve done the campsite delivery.’
So he does know who I am.
Evie steps forward. ‘Thanks, Matt,’ she says. ‘This is Freya, my granddaughter.’
Matt smiles. ‘I guessed.’
He’s got the bluest eyes.
Evie folds me in a big hug. Just for that moment I want to bury my head in the softness of her body and forget everything.
‘Safe and sound, thank goodness,’ Evie says. ‘What a storm!’ She hugs me even tighter. ‘I’m so glad to see you, Freya. You can’t imagine!’
The rain’s almost stopped. I wait with Evie while Matt gets the tractor started up. We sit on the wall, watching the fog lifting off the water, while everyone else walks up the hill, turns off left to the pub or right to the campsite. Once everyone’s disappeared, I let myself imagine we’re the only people on the whole island.
The air’s sweet after rain. Waves wash against the stone jetty. The tractor engine hums into the distance. For a moment, there’s silence. Something drops away inside me. It’s like an elastic band twanging free. I can breathe again. I’m here, at my favourite place on earth, where I can really be me.
But nothing is that simple any more. This is an island full of memories now. Full of ghosts, and secrets.