Miss Elisabeth pauses on her walk, watching the youth from Falcon down on the beach below her. He’s hunched over, staring at his phone. Youngsters these days never look up; they don’t see what’s in front of them – the rainbow, the brilliant light slicing through the clouds. His head is bowed. He looks grief-stricken. She feels for him. She knows a fair few things about loss herself – her mother, her father, her baby brother, her friend Florence. You don’t get to Miss Elisabeth’s age without loss nibbling at the extremities of your life like moths in your woollens.
She wonders, did she do the right thing telling the police her suspicions about Kit? She’s less sure of it now. He seems genuine. She can’t take it back anyhow.
But she does know that the young man will heal. He will grow a brand-new heart, and the injured places will be more resilient this time – scar tissue and knitted-together bones are so much 372tougher than the originals.
Whatever happens, this island knits itself back together.
She thinks of Hannah. The waters have closed over the maid’s head and her atoms are mixing in the deepest waters now; she is part of the mighty ocean.
Hannah once told Miss Elisabeth she wanted to visit New York. Perhaps parts of her will reach it, eventually. You can’t fight the tides and the currents – you go with the flow.
Addressing nothing and no one, Miss Elisabeth says out loud, ‘Well, time to get on.’ She sets off towards the shop at a fair old clip.
The next stop from Tresco is the east coast of North America. You could row it if you were that way inclined. Some hardy souls have done just that, raising money for charity. Months at sea, thousands and thousands of nautical miles, one hell of a lot of nothing but the freezing Atlantic in between. Miss Elisabeth hugs her coat tighter around herself at the thought. She does not fancy so much nothing.