The Mirror World of Melody Black (29 page)

By one thirty, I could see that the water had reached some of the more distant posts on either side of the refuge. I was on a shrinking peninsula of sand, and the marsh stood between me and the dunes beyond the causeway – the nearest high ground. From this moment on, I was effectively cut off.

Oddly, I didn't mind. In fact, I felt a little lighter now the point of no return had passed, despite the glaring consequences of my lack of action. For the next seven or eight hours, minimum, I was staying put. But realistically, it would be even longer than that. If high tide wasn't for another three hours, then it would be pitch-black by the time the water had receded far enough for me to continue my crossing. The moon was already up, and it wasn't much of a moon: a very slender crescent, barely noticeable in the still-bright sky. It certainly wouldn't provide much illumination after the sun went down. It was going to be a dark, dark night, and in all likelihood, I wouldn't be leaving the refuge point until morning.

I still had good phone reception, so I sent my mother a text saying that I'd changed my plans and wouldn't be back in Exeter for another night. Then I stood facing the mainland for the next hour or so, watching the water creep and creep until it was just a few metres away.

It was at this stage I realized that if didn't want to hold it in for the next seven hours, or go in the corner – which I didn't – I'd better nip down the ladder to urinate on the sand. So I did; except, of course, it was a little more complicated than that. I'd never had to pee outside before, or not in the large portion of my life that I remembered. To say it was a challenge would be an understatement. In the end, I half squatted with my jeans around my ankles and my back braced against one of the support stilts, facing away from the road. This last precaution was probably unnecessary – from the road, you'd have needed a telescope to make an accurate diagnosis of what was going on out here – but still. It's hard not to feel self-conscious when you've just exposed yourself in the middle of a wide-open space. I got through the whole procedure as quickly as I could, and then scrabbled back up the ladder to safety. Then I resumed my position overlooking the oncoming waves, and thought some more about the situation to which I had irrevocably committed myself.

On the face of it, the choice I'd made was just plain crazy – as crazy as anything I'd done over the past six months. Yet that was not at all how it felt. In all honesty, it seemed the obvious and inevitable conclusion to my time on Lindisfarne. It was very peaceful out here, with the sea now swirling below me, and a perfect cloudless sky overhead. Now that I was back on my platform, I didn't feel at all vulnerable, and I certainly wasn't in any imminent danger. The weather forecast had said it would remain dry, and even if the temperature was now dropping, it was meant to stay well above freezing overnight. I had spare clothes in my rucksack, along with the two small bottles of Diet Coke, as yet untouched. All in all, I felt very calm and self-assured, and this sense of wellbeing only increased as the minutes ticked on.

Just before three thirty, the sun slipped below the hills on the mainland, and I replaced my sunglasses with regular glasses. The sky was an astonishing shade of violet, as was the sea, which now stretched out in every direction. Soon, it had covered most of the marsh and was lapping at the roadside.

I smoked another cigarette and watched as the land, sea and sky grew darker and darker, until finally I couldn't distinguish one from the other.

It was dark, but not completely dark. Or perhaps, more accurately, it was so dark that the little light there was seemed almost an abundance. I'd underestimated the difference the moon would make out here. It shone low in the west like the blade of a scimitar, and was reflected in the sea as a long ribbon of silver light. Beyond this, there was a kind of diffuse glow, and then just shifting shadows, a vast mass of black water that rippled through the wider fabric of the night. I couldn't make out the shoreline – I couldn't see anything solid past the nearest marker-posts – but there were isolated lights out there too: the lights from the farm buildings at the edge of the mainland, and, looking in the opposite direction, the streetlights of Lindisfarne village. The latter, I knew, would be on all night, so however dark it got, I'd have at least one anchor to give me a sense of distance and direction.

The temperature must have dropped by three or four degrees since the sun went down, so I put on another layer of clothes, along with my gloves and scarf. While rummaging in my bag, I also found a small packet of biscuits, a muesli bar and some mints – relics from some walk I'd taken the previous month. It wasn't much of a dinner, but it was better than the nothing I'd been expecting. I washed it down with a few mouthfuls of Diet Coke, followed by another cigarette for dessert, and afterwards felt surprisingly satisfied.

By then, the sea was audible again; I could hear the faint hiss of the breaking waves, which told me the tide must have dropped some distance back from the causeway. But I had to wait a while until I could actually see the foaming edge of the water, and it did not stay visible for long. By the time the water had receded almost to the refuge point, the moon was so low it appeared little more than a curved needle of light poking out of the horizon. A few minutes later, it set completely. And then it really was dark.

I let over an hour pass before I went down the ladder again. I used the light from my mobile phone to illuminate the entrance point, removed my gloves so I'd have a surer grip, and then shuffled forward on my bottom until I felt the heel of my boot slip over the edge of the platform. Once I'd located the handrails, I turned and manoeuvred both feet onto the first step, and then the second, before returning my phone to my back pocket. After that, I descended very slowly, into absolute darkness, counting another six steps before I again retrieved my phone. Holding it low in one hand, I could make out the sand, just one rung beneath me and dry once more.

I urinated in the same spot as before, but this time it was slightly easier, despite the fact I couldn't see a thing. Afterwards, I faced away from the refuge point, held my breath, and took ten large strides out onto the sand. I don't know why, exactly. I suppose I just wanted to test myself, to see how it felt to be out there in the open, with nothing but darkness on every side.

It felt okay, or it did for a while. It was only when I switched my phone display on again that I felt afraid. Because then I could see how isolated I was. When I looked back the way I'd come, I could no longer see the refuge point. I was standing in the centre of a pool of blue-white light, but beyond this, there were only curving black walls, endless and impenetrable.

Of course, I knew there was nothing rational about my fear; all I had to do was follow my footprints and I'd be back where I started in a matter of seconds. But right then, this felt a matter of faith rather than fact. Confronted by a void in every direction, it was just as easy to believe that retraced steps might lead somewhere else entirely, or nowhere at all – that the refuge point might even have ceased to exist the instant I let it slip from my sight.

But after a few moments, these thoughts started to wane, and soon I could see how ridiculous they were. I was even a little irritated at myself, which is perhaps why I didn't head straight back the way I'd come. Instead, I got a cigarette from my coat pocket and smoked it almost down to the filter, until I felt absolutely calm once more. Then I aligned myself with my footprints and walked the ten large paces back to the refuge.

When I found myself again at the foot of the ladder, it felt as if something inside me was subtly different, as if I'd achieved something more than a short walk on the sand.

Back on the platform, there was now a small breeze blowing in through the entrance point, so I relocated to the corner diagonally opposite, where I set about fashioning the best bed I could. Using my rucksack as a pillow, and with a long cardigan as a blanket, I lay down in the darkness and looked up at the sky. There were stars, of course – hundreds of them, scattered like glitter. I'd grown used to seeing stars since I left London, but this was something else. Every inch of the sky seemed crowded with them, ready to burst.

After a while, I realized that my lips felt cold. My face was the only part of me still exposed to the night air. My gloves were back on and I had my Eskimo hood pulled up so far that its furry lining stroked my cheeks when I moved. But now I also pulled my scarf up over my face, leaving only a very thin visor through which I could continue to look at the stars. Later, when the temperature seemed to drop further, I covered my eyes too.

I've no idea how long I lay like that, in this strange cocoon I'd built for myself, but time, as far as I could gauge, passed quickly. Soon, I was aware of the sound of the sea again, the increasing rush of approaching water. I didn't check my watch or get up to smoke or stretch. Oddly, the longer I lay motionless on that hard wooden floor, the more comfortable, the more at ease, I felt. I'd been aware of little irritations at first – the lack of cushioning at my shoulder blades, the moisture from my breath – but before long, these things were barely perceptible. Or perhaps it was that I chose not to perceive them; I just shifted my attention slightly, and they faded out of consciousness.

Then, for a long time, I felt like I was on the cusp of a dream. Scraps of thought – images from the past six months, mostly – came unbidden, with one flowing seamlessly into the next. But there wasn't any logic I could discern; just lots of disjointed impressions that rose and fell in gradually diminishing waves. The last thing I remember seeing is Marie Martin curtsying to me in that ridiculous restaurant in Soho. And soon after that, I must have fallen asleep.

It took me a few moments to get my bearings when I awoke. Then it all came surging back: I was on an eight-by-eight-foot platform in the middle of the sea, waiting for dawn and the tide; and it occurred to me then that this was probably not the kind of thing I'd ever be able to tell anyone about, and that it was probably better that way.

I removed the scarf from my face and was greeted by a blast of air cold enough to sting my cheeks. The sky above was still flooded with stars. I checked my phone and saw that it was six fifty, which meant it would be getting light within the hour.

I wasn't very comfortable any more: my feet were cold and my neck was stiff and my back bruised, and my stomach felt small and tight. But despite this, when I stood up to stretch I found that I felt remarkably refreshed given the circumstances, as if I'd slept for eight straight hours on a well-sprung mattress rather than just a few on bare wooden boards. And my head felt clear too – completely free of clutter, like it had been cleaned and rebooted overnight.

In tiny increments, the sky brightened. I drank some Diet Coke and took my tablets, and then leaned my elbows on the side of the refuge point as the tide crept out and the sun rose over Lindisfarne.

It was a little after eight thirty. The waves had passed beneath me and the sky was a pale blue. I had just shouldered my rucksack, and was preparing to climb back down the ladder, when my phone rang. It was my mother.

‘Abby, you're awake.'

‘Yes. Stating the obvious but—'

‘I thought it would be better to call straight away.'

There was something strange in her voice. The sort of strange that immediately makes your stomach drop. ‘Mum, what is it? What's happened?'

‘Darling, it's your father . . .'

The funeral was organized by Marie and my sister. They asked me, when they started, if I'd like to have an input. Actually, I think what Francesca told me over the phone was that she and Marie ‘wanted' me to be involved. It was a lie, of course, but I believe it came from a good place. She didn't want me to feel excluded. Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to imagine how the three of us would work together. Arranging the catering for the reception, selecting music, writing the eulogy – everything seemed fraught with danger. Not that I expected anyone to ask me to write, or even contribute to, the eulogy. Whatever Fran and Marie envisaged my involvement could be, I knew they'd have to draw the line somewhere. But even simple things like flowers and sandwich fillings and venue felt far, far beyond me. The truth is I had no idea what Daddy would have wanted, and in my limited experience, this is the first question people ask when planning a funeral. I didn't have a clue if he'd want flowers; I didn't even know if he'd have wanted to be buried or cremated. These were things I'd never thought about.

Unfortunately, Daddy had never thought about them, either – or if he had, he'd kept it to himself. My father had left no instructions in the event of his death. In part, of course, this was because he hadn't been expecting to die, and I don't just mean that in the sense it might apply to any apparently healthy fifty-eight-year-old man who suffered a fatal stroke in his sleep. I mean, also, that I don't think the notion of dying ever really entered my father's head. He had too large an ego to contemplate a world without him in it.

If I had been asked to write a eulogy, that would have been the title.

‘You know, he doted on you as a child,' my mother told me in the car, as we drove to London on the morning of the funeral; and it wasn't the first time she'd told me this. She'd told me many times over the past week. I think it was meant to make me feel better in some way. ‘You were much closer than he and Fran were, or you and me, for that matter.' She gave a small, wry laugh. ‘It actually made me a bit jealous at the time, seeing how close the two of you were.'

I threw my mum a look, but she had her eyes fixed on the motorway. ‘Mum, you're talking about a very small portion of my life, and one that I hardly even remember. Daddy may have loved me when I was a child – I'll take your word for it – but I'm not going to pretend that our relationship was anything more than it was.'