This Northern Sky (17 page)

I wonder what Finn would say to that.

Mackie nods. ‘And the fact is, nothing stands still. Things do have to change; people have to adapt. But not all change is good. You have to think about each thing on its own merit. Not accept
everything
.’

Isla looks as if she’s going to argue, but she doesn’t.

Thea and Piers start packing up the sleeping bags and cooking things. The party’s properly over. Jamie and Clara decide to have one final swim before they make their way back to the Manse.

‘Anyone else coming in? Thea? Kate?’ Clara asks.

Thea shakes her head.

‘Sea’s too cold for me,’ I say. ‘And I should be going home.’

I get my stuff together, say goodbye.

Tim gives me a big bear hug. ‘Thanks for the cake, clever Kate,’ he says. ‘Thanks for being here, celebrating my birthday.’

‘I’ll never forget it.’

‘Me neither!’ Tim laughs. ‘Nearly destroyed thousands of pounds worth of jeep.’

‘I meant the Northern Lights,’ I say. ‘And the beautiful beach, and being with everybody . . .’

I wheel the bike the long way, up the track towards the road.

Going home
, I said. But it’s just a holiday house, Fiona’s house. I’m not sure I’ll ever really be going home again. I think about what Isla said about running away. The sort of people who want to move to an island to live, rather than the ones born and raised there. You have to ask what they’re running
from
, she said. What they are trying to leave behind. Because we take ourselves with us, wherever we go, however far and remote.

One of those random thoughts pops up:
Home is where the heart is
. It’s a quotation from something: no idea what.

Maybe some people get born in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or to the wrong parents. Or they end up marrying the wrong person, or being in the wrong job, and they have to spend a lifetime finding their way back to where they ought to be.

Where the heart is.

I cycle slowly back. Away from the shelter of the dunes the wind is stronger, blowing against me. As I come down the last slope into the village and past the shop, I see Mum outside the house, pegging washing on the line, even though it is a Sunday. The clothes flap and dance: she’s finding it hard to keep the pegs on the line the wind’s so strong. Her skirt, hair – everything’s tugged sideways by the wind. It’s comforting and familiar, this little scene: a snapshot of ordinary life.

I smile, she waves. I pedal across the bumpy ground to the gate and get off.

‘How was it?’ she calls. ‘Have a lovely time?’

‘Amazing,’ I say. I wheel the bike through the gate and lean it against the white wall of the house. ‘Guess what? We saw the Northern Lights!’

‘No! In summer? You lucky things! I’ve always wanted to see that. I can’t believe we missed it! Tell me about it.’ She picks up the empty washing basket and we go inside together.

Mum clicks on the kettle for coffee and brings her two new cups from the draining board over to the table. It feels like a normal day; we could be living here like this together, and it wouldn’t be strange at all. A glimmer of all the possibilities ahead comes into my head: all the choices you can make about where to live, and how, and with whom.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I ask.

‘Birdwatching, walking,’ she says. ‘Having some thinking time.’

We sip coffee. I hold the cup up in both hands so I can see the hares running round. I describe the Northern Lights to her, but it’s hard to explain exactly what it felt like, watching the sky from the beach in the middle of the night: the feeling of wonder, and the rightness of it all.

Mum stands up and goes to the window. ‘We phoned Bonnie and Hannah last night,’ she says. She’s looking away, as if she can’t bear to see my face. ‘We felt we should. It didn’t seem fair, you being the only one knowing about Dad and me. You should be able to talk to each other about it if you want to.’

It’s another blow, soft and deadly. What had I expected? That they might have changed their minds? Decided that it wasn’t too late to reconsider?

‘What did they say?’

‘They were both upset, of course. Bonnie especially. She wants to come home. We tried to persuade her not to. She’s been having such a good time in Spain, it seems a shame to cut that short.’

‘She could come here,’ I say. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Me too.’ Mum sighs. She comes back to the table and sits down. ‘It’s such a mess,’ she says. ‘So
not
what I wanted for my daughters. I’m so sorry, Kate.’

Too late, Mum. You should have thought about that before.

My anger surprises me: the way it flares up, blindingly bright and jagged like the pain over my eyes when a migraine starts.

She doesn’t notice. We stare out of the window at the white horses on the waves. ‘It’s blowing up for another storm,’ Mum says. ‘You were lucky, catching that window of fine weather for the party.’

I yawn.

‘Go and get some sleep. I don’t suppose you got much last night.’

Twenty-two

I get up in the early evening. Dad comes back soon after, in time for supper. He’s caught the sun: red cheeks, red nose, red neck. He looks happy though. He lists the birds he’s seen. He had a chat in the café at Martinstown with a delightful young couple on their honeymoon . . .

Mum carries on folding and smoothing the washing she’s brought in from the line, dried stiff by the salty wind.

Dad keeps talking. ‘But all in all, I think it’s probably best if I go back home this week. Lots to sort out. Should make a start.’

Mum’s hands stop moving. She doesn’t speak. The clock ticks round.

‘So soon?’ I blurt out. ‘Because
I
am not going home early.’

Mum still doesn’t say a word.

‘Just me,’ Dad says lightly, as if it doesn’t matter one way or another, as if it’s of no great significance. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to come, Kate.’

‘Good. Because I’m not.’

Mum looks up at last. ‘Kate?’ she says. ‘Could you let me and Dad have a few minutes on our own?’

I snatch up my jacket from the chair, slam the front door behind me.

The wind’s blowing from the west. I walk into it, eyes stinging. I walk along the single track road and down on to the sandy beach with the fringe of marram grass along the top. I start looking for the rock shaped like a bowl that I lay in that first day on the island. Ages ago, it seems, though it’s only a couple of weeks. I can’t find it: the rocks all look the same from a distance.

At last I stumble across it. I climb in, lie down. Only today it doesn’t feel warm, comforting, a resting place. The rock’s cold, hard. Even with my collar up and my hands pulled up inside my sleeves I’m shivering. I turn on to my side, curl up. The stone cuts into my hip.

Dad’s face, set hard. How could he
do
that? Simply walk away from Mum, and me, and everything we’ve been together as a family? Talk about it so casually, as if he doesn’t care, doesn’t see what he’s doing to the rest of us?

The rational voice in my own head tells me it’s the
only
way he could do it: a decision, and a turning away. That way he doesn’t have to see the fallout. He can pretend it isn’t happening, because it’s all taking place somewhere else, like a shower of rain falling way out at sea. That he still, somewhere, somehow, loves us.

The one bright thought is Bonnie, on her way home.

It’s too cold and blustery to stay still for long. I walk further along the beach, back up to the road and keep on walking westwards. The sun’s going down: banks of cloud in layers building up over the sea. That’s the direction the wind farm will be. I let myself imagine it: the hundreds of turbines lighting up as the sun sets: a huge forest of giant Christmas trees whirring and humming in the dark.

Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe it’s a change that has to happen, and there’s no point resisting.

Finn.

I imagine him and the others sitting round the table, chatting about the party, everyone helping get the dinner ready, switching on the lamps, drawing the curtains. Someone will be lighting the peat stove as the evening cools down. I think about what makes them so strong as a family. And, of course, it’s Alex and Joy, their steady, loving relationship which holds it all together, invisibly. Their love for each other makes a kind of force field around them all: family, friends. It makes everyone feel safe. It keeps back the dark.

The ache inside my heart is almost unbearable tonight.

I’ve walked a long way: three miles at least, because I’ve come to the turn in the road where I waited for Finn and Isla that time before, when we went out on the bikes. Without even thinking about it I take the fork up to the white cottage. Her dad’s van is parked outside, a pile of lobster pots stacked neatly by the side of the house. The wind’s stronger up here: it whistles through the telephone wires, blows a trail of sand across the tarmac and on to the grass. A light’s on inside the cottage.

I knock at the door. I can hear a man’s voice calling out, feet coming downstairs. The door swings open and Isla’s there, her hair wild round her face, her eyes blazing.

‘Is he back? Is there news?’ Her voice is tight with worry.

‘Who?’

Disappointment floods her face.

‘Who are you talking about? What’s happened?’ I ask.

‘Finn. He hasn’t come back. They’ve been out looking for him. I thought you must have come to tell me he’s safe.’

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I say.

‘It’s been nearly eleven hours. It’s getting dark. There’s another storm blowing in . . . it’s dangerous walking along the rocks in the dark, when the tide’s up. Joy has an instinct about these things. I’m surprised they didn’t phone you –’

‘There’s no phone at our house.’

‘You must have been the last person to see him, early this morning. Did he say anything? Where he was going?’

‘Just that he was going to walk along to the next beach. He wanted to be by himself. He often does that, doesn’t he?’

‘Was he upset? Think, Kate. It’s really important.’

‘He was quite calm, I think . . . He listened to me, mostly, talking about things. He was nice to me.’

But he was upset about you, Isla, being with Tim –

‘I suppose he was a bit preoccupied.’ I take a deep breath. This is difficult to say. ‘I suppose it might have been hard for him to see you and Tim getting together last night. Swimming together this morning.’

A blast of wind brings the first drops of rain.

‘You’d better come in,’ Isla says.

In the hall light I see her face better: embarrassed, red. She doesn’t like me, I think. She blames me for something, though I can’t imagine what.

Her father steps out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a towel. ‘Any news?’

She shakes her head.

‘You must be Kate,’ he says. He shakes my hand. ‘Heard about you.’

‘I’ll phone Joy again,’ Isla says. ‘It’s been a while since we talked. Anything might have happened by now.’

I wait in the hall while she takes the phone and sits down on a chair to make the call. There are framed black and white photos hung along the wall and up the stairs: boats, and people. Old photos of island houses with thatched roofs and thick walls. A boy holding a large tabby cat. A group of fishermen. A younger version of Isla with hair in plaits, freckles, sitting on the top of a gate with a kite in her hands. No pictures of her mum, I notice. No sign of her. I realise for the first time that she’s never referred to her mother at all.

The worry note in Isla’s voice gets stronger.

I can hear another voice at the end of the line: its rising tone but not the actual words. Isla’s changes, becomes reassuring. ‘He’ll be fine. He needed some time alone, that’s all. Kate’s here. Yes. She said.’

My own heartbeat quickens: I can’t help it, as if worry is contagious or something. Because it seems a bit ridiculous to me, as if they are all massively overreacting. Unless there’s something they all know about Finn. Something I don’t know.

Isla puts her hand over the mouthpiece and turns to me. ‘What were you talking about with Finn? You said he just listened.’

My turn to go red. ‘About me, and a boy called Sam. And about a car accident I was in. But nothing too terrible, honestly. And Finn was very calm and wise. He didn’t seem upset by it. Not at all.’

She goes back to her call. I’m trying to hear both sides of the conversation but it’s impossible. She just says things like
yes, no, I don’t think so. Just friends. Yes
.

The clock on the wall ticks round. Ten fifteen. Dusk outside. Wind rattling the door.

‘What was he wearing?’ Isla’s asking me.

I try to remember. ‘Jeans. Black T-shirt. Grey top, I think, tied round his waist. Boots.’