This Northern Sky (9 page)

Why don’t you ask them straight out?
That’s what my friend Molly would say. But Molly hasn’t a clue. Her parents are happy together. Her family talk about everything openly. But we’ve never been like that. If Sam and I were still seeing each other, I could tell him about it. If Sam and I were together, maybe none of this would feel so important . . .

Only I know that’s not true. Not really.

Everything – my whole world – is in the balance, about to tip.

I make myself remember happy times.

Christmas, Hannah’s first year at uni. We rented a cottage in Northumberland with Molly’s family. It didn’t snow, but it was freezing cold. Temperatures plummeted every night, and hoar frost furred every twig and stem, almost as thick as snow. The paths and lane were iced to a slippery polish. We walked on Christmas morning in thick white mist, Dad and Molly’s dad leading the way, using their navigation skills and the map and compass, and we got hopelessly lost, and everyone laughed and it didn’t matter. Not one bit. Mum and Molly’s mum and Hannah cooked Christmas dinner and there was nearly a disaster when the duck fat got too hot and the kitchen was full of smoke but Mum just laughed and laughed and we had to open all the windows and doors and we froze for about two hours, but the meal turned out fine and Molly’s dad cleaned the oven and everything got sorted. After dinner we played silly games and turned off the lights so we could sit with candles and the light from the fire and everyone was relaxed and happy. Mum and Dad cuddled together on the sofa. Dad sang Mum a song he’d written . . .

It’s nice remembering that. Dad, writing songs . . . Dad, happy. Mum’s face glowing in the firelight . . .

Or that summer we went to the beach in Wales, where Dad climbed down the cliff quicker than everyone else, so that as the rest of us came over the edge of the hill we looked down and saw the words he had written in the sand:
I LOVE YOU!

It was the most romantic thing we’d ever seen him do for Mum. She had tears in her eyes.

But that was all years ago. It hasn’t been like that for a long, long time.

The squeal of bike brakes makes me look up. Finn’s skidded to a stop outside the house. I jump up, check my face quickly to make sure he can’t tell I’ve been crying, and go to the door.

‘Hello, you! Busy?’ he asks.

My face goes hot. It’s so obvious I’m not doing anything. Wasting my day.

‘Want to come and help get the peat? Everyone’s coming. You can meet them all. Tim and Jamie and the others.’

I nod. ‘OK.’

‘It’ll be hard work, mind.’

He’s remembering what I was like with the cockle picking.

‘I’ll do my best,’ I say. ‘I’m not used to it, that’s all. Not like your
Isla
.’

Her name slips out before I’ve really thought. He gives me a funny look. ‘She’s not mine,’ he says very quietly.

‘Sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘I know I’m rubbish at practical things.’

‘Stop that,’ Finn says. ‘You’re just fine, Kate. Stop putting yourself down.’

Tears well up again. I turn my head so he can’t see, grab my scarf and a jacket from the hooks in the hall.

Is that what I do?
I wonder.
Put myself down?

‘I’ll give you a backie if you like,’ Finn says.

‘A what?’

‘A ride on the back of the bike. It’ll be quicker that way.’

‘Oh! Yes, OK.’

He waits for me to clamber on behind him. ‘Hold on tight!’ he says. ‘It’s a bit of a bumpy ride. And you’ll have to get off for the hill.’

We wobble along through the village, me trying to balance and laughing so much I nearly fall off. I have to walk the next bit, which is uphill. The very last bit is the best: a long freewheel down the track to the Manse. At the bottom, the bike slows, stops and I get off. I can’t stop smiling.

Finn grins. ‘You should get yourself a bike!’ he says. ‘You’d really enjoy it. You could get around the whole island then, and see the best places.’

‘Mum hired one from the man at the garage,’ I tell him. ‘But it was rubbish. Old and cranky and she got a puncture.’

‘We might have one you could borrow,’ Finn says. ‘We’ll look in the shed later.’

Alex waves from the door of the Manse. I wave back. Piers and Thea are putting tools into the back of the jeep. A dark-haired, good-looking bloke in a tweed jacket and jeans is leaning against the stone wall, a mug of coffee in one hand which he raises as if in greeting.

‘That’s Tim,’ Finn says. ‘Jamie and Clara are somewhere around too.’ He waves vaguely in the direction of the house.

‘We won’t all fit in the jeep,’ I say. Duh! Obviously.

‘No. So you and I can go on the bike, and the others will walk up.’

‘What do we have to do exactly?’

‘Piers and I will finish cutting the peat. You can help shift the stuff that’s already been cut and dried; put the peats in sacks so we can bring them back down in the jeep. Then we build the proper peat stack next to the house. I’ll show you: there’s a special way to do it, so the peats can dry out and then make a weatherproof skin to last the winter.’

‘It sounds complicated,’ I say.

‘Not really. It’s easier if everyone helps. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.’

Everyone’s quite a lot older than us. Finn isn’t intimidated like me, but that’s because he knows them all and, in any case, he’s the one who seems to know the most about the peat and the traditional ways to do things, more than his older brothers even.

Piers and Thea climb into the jeep.

‘Here’s Jamie and Clara,’ Finn says. ‘Come and say hello.’

Jamie’s a rounder, more solid version of Piers, with fairer, curlier hair. Clara is petite and gorgeous, with short fair hair and almond-shaped eyes like a pixie.

‘This is Kate,’ Finn tells them. ‘She’s staying at Fiona’s place for the summer.’

‘Hi,’ Clara says. ‘Nice to meet you, Kate.’

Jamie nods but doesn’t say anything.

‘We’ll see you up there,’ Finn says.

We climb back on the bike. But it’s too difficult to pedal uphill with me: we walk the long way back up the slope until the track levels out again.

This part of the island is covered in springy heather, humming with bees. There are silvery trails of water between black banks of peaty soil, pools reflecting sky. Now, ahead of us, I can see lines of people working at the peat banks. Finn’s smiling, waving. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ he says to me. ‘To think we’re doing the exact same work that’s been done on the island for hundreds of years. Except in the old days people would have horses and carts rather than jeeps and cars, of course.’

I think of Mum, at the garden centre, choosing compost. ‘I thought we were running out of peat?’ I say. ‘Like you’re not supposed to buy it for gardening any more.’

‘That’s totally different. Yes, it’s terrible where peat extraction’s happened on a huge mechanical scale, like in parts of Ireland. But this is small scale, sustainable, hand-cutting for one family’s domestic use. It’s like the difference between small scale fishing in a little family boat, versus those vile enormous trawlers with dredge nets that bring up everything off the seabed.’

‘OK, OK,’ I say quickly before he goes on. ‘Sorry. I guess I’m just pig ignorant.’

He gives me a look. ‘Stop it!’

‘I know, I’m doing it again. It’s a habit.’

‘A bad one!’

Tim’s really efficient: he does most of the heavy carrying, lifting the sacks up into the back of the jeep. The rest of us fill the sacks, but talking and larking about at the same time. Piers recites a poem by some Irish poet; he tells me about the Tollund man, found perfectly preserved in a Danish peat bog. Finn works the hardest, of course, cutting a new line of fresh peat with the specially designed spade. Piers and Jamie follow behind, digging the peat and stacking it up. Piers sings at the top of his voice and Jamie joins in. They don’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks. They’re enjoying themselves too much.

‘Are you having a good holiday?’ Tim asks, as he waits for me to fill up a sack.

‘Yes.’ I realise I almost
am
, in spite of everything. ‘Though it’s not at all how I imagined it would be.’

He heaves the sack up and dumps it in the jeep. ‘What did you imagine?’

‘I don’t know. I had no idea the island was going to be this small, and remote, and so different from anywhere I’ve ever been.
Remember
being,’ I correct myself. ‘I was here as a baby. And I suppose I didn’t imagine meeting people . . . making new friends. Doing stuff like this and actually enjoying it!’

‘You’re here with your family?’

‘Mum and Dad. Not my sisters. They’re older . . . they’re doing their own thing this summer. Well, Hannah’s working.’

He listens while I talk about them. He has gorgeous brown eyes. He’s incredibly handsome. I wonder what Bonnie or Hannah would think.

I find myself telling him more than I meant to, little by little.

‘The worst thing is that my parents are on the verge of splitting up. The holiday was supposed to make things better, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s made it worse.’ I blink back tears.

Tim puts his arm round my shoulders and hugs me. ‘I’m sorry, Kate.’

I wriggle away, embarrassed.

He doesn’t take any notice. ‘That’s harsh. It really is. But you’ll be OK. Really. It’s happened to so many of us. Thea. Me. It gets easier, believe me. You’ll find that too, given time. But it is very hard to begin with. I understand that.’

I look over at Thea, smiling at something Jamie’s just said.
You can’t tell
, I’m thinking.
No one would know from the outside. Tim, even!
I don’t know why that comes as a surprise to me, but it does. For me, it’s like this horrible shameful thing, as if it’s my fault, a weakness in me, something I should have been able to stop . . .

But I can’t say any of that out loud. Not to Tim, not to anyone.

Tim’s still talking. ‘And the best thing to do is to keep busy. Don’t think about it too much. So let’s get that next sack filled and into the jeep.’

Piers starts reciting lines from another poem: ‘Wordsworth’s
The Solitary Reaper
,’ he announces pompously. Jamie and Clara join in.

Tim pulls a face and makes me laugh, despite everything.

Back at the Manse, Finn goes straight up to have a bath. So I look after myself. I go along the bookcases, searching for a copy of Wordsworth’s poems. I find the one they were chanting up on the peat beds about the Highland girl singing. I copy my two favourite lines into my notebook:

Breaking the silence of the seas

Among the farthest Hebrides.

Piers smiles when he sees what I’m reading. ‘I’ll find you the Heaney poems about the Bog People too,’ he says.

No one thinks it’s the least bit odd that I’m curled up with a book and a cup of tea, reading poetry. I guess this is how they live all the time. Joy brings in freshly baked cake: fruit tea-bread, and ginger cake with sticky bits. ‘For the workers,’ she says. ‘Tuck in. You’ve all done a great job and I’m very thankful. Now we can heat the Manse all winter.’

I wonder what Dad would say if he saw me here, like this. Pleased, I guess, that at last I’m showing some interest in
poetry
. And Mum? She’d be envious, more likely, of the company. Like when she talked about watching Finn’s family and friends on the beach, years ago.
It looked fun
, she said, in that wistful tone. As if she’d wished she could be part of it too.

How isolated Mum and Dad have become. How strange that I’ve not noticed till now how almost all their friends have drifted away . . .

Finn hasn’t reappeared after his bath, and as I’m here as his guest, it makes me feel a bit odd. Should I go home now? But no one seems to be bothered about me still being here, and it’s cosy and friendly and much nicer than walking back to the house, not knowing what I’ll find when I get there.

Eventually Alex and Joy invite me to stay for supper, so I do. Finn comes downstairs at last. He doesn’t pay me any particular attention. Tim does though. He makes sure I feel at home. He sits next to me and chats about his job in publishing. He’s a sales representative, selling books to supermarkets. He travels all the time.

He’s grown-up, with a proper job and a flat and a car and everything, but he’s kind, not scary or showing off how clever he is, like the others do a bit. Not Finn, I don’t mean, because he’s not clever-clever in an academic way. Though the way Finn talks about the island, it sometimes seems a bit like he’s lecturing me . . .

‘I can take you home after dinner if you like,’ Tim says.

Thea looks up: she watches us for a while.

Tim notices her watching. ‘Want to come with me to take Kate home?’ he asks her.

She shakes her head. ‘Ask Finn,’ she says.

But he’s busy, it seems. Other things to do. Perhaps it’s just a signal to me: that he’s not interested in me
that
way. It feels a bit like a snub, but I know I am
overly sensitive
about these things. So Molly always says.