The wind picks up as they leave the harbour. Mary-Jane sits and turns her face towards it, blinking hard and swallowing back tears as she watches St Mary’s recede. Her phone buzzes. John again.
He kissed her tenderly on her forehead when he left for work early this morning. He’s texted four times since – hearts, kittens, I love you – and it is barely midday.
His love has never been in doubt.
He will bring home flowers for her tonight, something unpronounceable and unseasonal from the garden greenhouses. He will tell her how much he’s missed her, and he will mean it. Usually, if she’s at work, he will pop in to see her in the garden café at lunchtime; then they will walk home together after she’s cleaned the tables and washed the mugs and cake plates, and he’s finished his day propagating or grafting or cataloguing or whatever – his vital, important work, as opposed to her menial 150job, dishing up cream teas to ancient day-trippers. It is his expertise, knowledge and passion that has brought them here for a year at least.
‘The Abbey Garden!’ he’d enthused. ‘What a gift!’
She was nervous that the job was too high profile. Risky. But he reassured her as he so often did, saying, ‘Sweetheart, they will only want photos of my work, not this ugly mug.’ He smiled and added, ‘Remember we are under His protection. Always.’ He rubbed the softness of his beard into her neck until she shivered.
But she isn’t sure anyone is protecting them, let alone the old God of their childhood. She hasn’t been at all sure for a long time.
She tried to pray this morning before she got the boat over to shop at St Mary’s. Failed.
John must know or at least intuit this sea change within her, although he’s said nothing. Would he forgive her if he discerned her dissembling? She used to think he would forgive her anything, but she cannot see how his unconditional love might encompass her new doubts.
She can no longer forgive herself.
Tonight, he will smile and kiss her belly, her breasts, her eyelids, her lips. And she will respond because she cannot help but do so. Because she is weak. Because she knows no different. He is the only man she has ever loved. And she cannot help but love him, just as John can’t help but believe, fervently, obsessively, that this is right.
As they make love, her body will betray her as it always does, moaning and squirming and pulling him deeper inside her, while her mind crawls away somewhere else entirely, into the darkness. 151
All of this is her fault. She has to finish it.
She has no idea how to do that.
A cry above her. She looks up, envying the seabirds soaring unburdened, buoyed by air currents. The souls of dead sailors some believe, although others say they’re no better than winged rats. Scavengers, cannibals. A strong sense of direction, birds, but no moral compass. Only doves are blessed.
She has a vision of swiftly standing, hauling her legs over the edge of the boat and hurling herself into the wintry waters—
No. There are too many people on board. She would be saved. Her body would be saved. There will be no salvation for her soul.
But she has no idea what else she can do.
The wind needles her cheeks.
Today she slipped into the tiny church on St Mary’s for privacy, to think. Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Church. She closed her eyes, but two loud voices ruined the moment.
‘Oh!’
‘How cute!’
Visitors always shatter the peace on the islands.
She did not have time to gather her thoughts.
In the church, alongside the tealights, there was a sign saying, Please wait at least five minutes after applying hand sanitiser before lighting a candle. It made her laugh out loud because she is wicked. She hides it well, but she knows her true nature.
Last week she sent away for a pregnancy test, having it delivered to the café rather than their home, telling her fellow workers that it was a surprise Christmas present for John. 152
In the toilets at work, she sat jiggling her leg as she waited to see which lines might appear. She hunched her shoulders against the chill and the foreboding, feeling sick when she thought of what might happen next.
Negative.
She was so relieved she might have given thanks then, but she found she could not. She wrapped the packaging in a carrier bag and walked swiftly up to the dump in her lunch break to dispose of it.
As they forge towards Tresco the wind snatches at the spray and flings it in her face. She bows her head as if she’s praying now.
She is not praying.