‘Zola and Theo. And it was pretty abrupt. But really, these things happen all the time, she’s only seven, your daughter, fairly young for her year.’
‘OK.’
My throat is numbed. ‘OK.’ I repeat. ‘OK. I see.’
‘So please don’t worry. I wouldn’t have mentioned this if you hadn’t asked about Kirstie’s development.’
‘No.’
‘For what it’s worth, Sarah, my professional guess is that Kirstie is, in some way, compensating for the absence of her sister, almost trying to be her sister, so as to replace her, to moderate the grief. Thus, for instance, she has worked to become a better reader, to fill that gap. I’m not a child psychologist – but, as I understand it, this might not be unusual.’
‘No. No. Yes.’
‘And all children grieve in their own way. This is probably just part of the healing process. So, when are you leaving? It’s very soon, yes?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘This weekend.’
The phone feels heavy in my hand.
I gaze at the elegant houses across the street; the parked cars glinting under the streetlights. The twilight is now complete. The sky is clear. I can see all the many plane lights circling London, like little red sparks: rising from a vast and invisible fire.
Angus Moorcroft parked outside the Selkie Hotel, climbed from his cheap, tinny rental car – hired last night at Inverness Airport – and gazed across the mudflats, and the placid waters, to Torran. The sky was clean of cloud, giving a rare glimpse of northern sun: on a cold November day. Despite the clarity of the air, the cottage was only just visible, peering above the seaweedy rocks, with the white lighthouse behind.
With a hand shielding the sun, Angus squinted at his family’s new home. But a second car disturbed his thoughts – squealing to a stop, and parking. An old blue Renault.
His friend Josh Freedland got out, wearing a chunky Arran jumper, and jeans faintly floured with the dust of granite, or slate, or marble. Angus waved, and briefly looked down at his own jeans. He was going to miss good suits and silk ties.
Josh approached.
‘The white settler has arrived!’
The two men hugged, slapping backs. Angus apologized for his own lateness, for missing the original flight – Josh told him not to worry.
This response had a certain irony, in Angus’s mind. There was a time when it was Josh who was always late. When Josh was the most unreliable man in Great Britain. Everything was changing.
As one, they both turned, and gazed at the view across the Sound.
Angus murmured. ‘You know, I’d forgotten just how beautiful it is.’
‘So, when was the last time you were here?’
‘With you. And the gang. That last summer holiday.’
‘Really?’ Josh smiled, in frank surprise. ‘Junkie overboard! Junkie overboard!’
It was a catchphrase from that memorable holiday: when they’d come up here as college kids, to Angus’s granny’s island. They’d spent an epic weekend drinking too much, laughing too much, being obnoxious and loud, annoying the locals – and having enormous fun. They’d nearly sunk the rowing boat as they sculled back from the Selkie in the sweet, violet, Scottish summer gloaming: the twilight that never went totally black. Seals had emerged: perpendicular, and observing them. ‘Junkie overboard’ was born from one spectacularly intoxicated episode, when Josh, completely mashed on Ecstasy, had tried to embrace one of these seals, then fallen in the cold black water – at maybe 11 p.m.
It was a potentially lethal accident, but they were twenty-one years old and obviously immortal. So Josh just swam to the island, fully clothed – and then they’d got drunk, all over again, in that cranky, beautiful lighthouse-keeper’s cottage.
‘How long ago was that? Fifteen years? Jesus!’ Josh was chatting away, hands in pockets. The cool sunny wind tousled his ginger Jewish hair. ‘But we had fun, didn’t we? All that cider we drank in Coruisk. You seen any of the gang?’
‘Not so much.’
Angus could have added for obvious reasons. But he didn’t have to. Josh knew all the facts.
This last year, following Lydia’s death, Angus had turned to Josh, above all others: for long consoling phone calls, and the odd one-sided session in the pub, when Josh came down to London. And Josh had done his duty, listening to Angus talking about Lydia. Talking until the words turned to spit, until the words were a bodily fluid being purged, drooling from his mouth; talking until whisky and sleep blotted everything.
Josh was the only man who had seen Angus really cry about his dead daughter: one, dark, terrifying evening, when the nightflower of anguish had opened, and bloomed. A taboo had been broken that night, maybe in a good way. A man crying in front of a man, snot running, tears streaming.
And now?
Josh was checking something on his phone. Angus surveyed distant Torran Island once more. It was a long way across the mudflats: much further than he remembered. He’d have to walk down to the foreshore, then hike all the way around the big tidal island of Salmadair, then cross the causeway to the smaller, secondary tidal island of Torran. It would take thirty or forty minutes at the very least.
And this walking distance mattered, because the old island rowboat had long ago rotted to nothing. Which meant they had no boat. And until they acquired a new boat, he, Sarah and Kirstie would have to trek these dank, slippy, treacherous mudflats to access the island, and they could only do that at low tide.
‘Know anyone with a cheap dinghy? To sell?’
Josh looked up from his phone.
‘Mate, you haven’t sorted a boat?’
‘No.’
‘Gus, come on. Really? How can you live on Torran without a boat?’
‘We can’t. But we’ll just have to, until I buy one. And money is an issue.’
‘I can give you a lift in mine, right now?’
‘No, I want to walk across the mudflats. Test it.’
Angus’s friend was tilting his head, offering a sceptical smile.
‘You do remember those mudflats are dangerous, right?’
‘Er. Yeah.’
‘Seriously, Gus, at night – after civil twilight – you don’t want to cross those mudflats. Even with a torch, you could break an ankle on rocks, get stuck in the mud, and then you’re fucked.’
‘Josh—’
‘In Skye, no one can hear you scream: half the houses along the shore are empty. Holiday homes. In winter the tide will come in, cold and lethal: you’d drown.’
‘Josh! I know all this. It’s my island! Practically lived here as a boy.’
‘But you nearly always came in summer, no? In winter, days are five hours long, or less. Mate. Think about it. Even with a boat, Torran can be very tricky in winter. You can still be stranded for days.’
‘All right. Aye. I know winters are tough. I know it won’t be easy. But I don’t care.’
Josh laughed. ‘Sure. I get it. I think.’
Angus pressed