The Visitors (36 page)

Under my hand, fitting in my palm, I felt something round and hard and smooth. It was a perfect sea-washed stone. It was the size of an orange.

‘Don’t tell me just anything,’ said Izzy. Sweat fell in bright beads across his burned face. ‘I want the truth.’

I took the stone in my hand. Trembling, I came to one knee, then pushed myself to standing. The world swayed. I took a step and staggered sideways. I took another and somehow tottered forward. I was in touching distance of the beachcomber. I could smell the sweat reek of him.

‘Last time,’ he growled. ‘What are you?’

John shook his head, and sadness cracked in him. He squared up in front of Izzy, but he seemed to be looking directly at me.

‘I am alone,’ he said.

Izzy shrugged and held the knife out wide.

‘Goodbye, selkies,’ he said, and began to draw the knife towards Ailsa’s throat.

I made no mistake as I smashed the rock down on his head.

The impact jarred along my arm, piercing deep inside. I felt the crunch of bone. For a moment, Izzy simply stood, knife swaying above Ailsa. Then he dropped to his knees and they slumped headlong into the sand. I fell, too, and heaved myself away from the beachcomber. He was down, but not out, and he came to all fours, shaking his head in disbelief. Slowly, he raised a hand to his head. His fingers came away wet. In a quiet, burbling voice, he started talking to himself. He started singing a nursery rhyme.

‘Fell down,’ he cooed, ‘and broke his crown. Fell down.’

John scrambled to grab Ailsa. Sprawling headlong in the sand, he grabbed her and held her close, clutching her to his chest.

‘Down will come baby …’ muttered the beachcomber.

I kicked the knife out of his reach, and it vanished in the darkness.

‘… cradle and all,’ he said. He seemed puzzled.

Moving with studious care, he lay on his side in the sand, drawing his knees to his chest like a child, all the while crooning and muttering. A fat streak of blood flowed from his scalp, dripping through his hair and across his brow. Fringes of the tide crept closer to us.

I heard the ghosts of sirens.

Ailsa was ashen in the moonlight. John peeled back the fur. When he saw her wounds, he could only put a hand across his mouth.

‘Don’t worry about it, Dad,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, my girl. My own girl, my girl.’

‘You found him, Dad.’

‘Hush, now. Hush.’

‘You’re free.’

John froze. His lips tried the words.

‘Free.’

‘No more searching, Dad. You found him.’

John blinked.

‘Mum’s gone, Dad. No more looking.’

‘No more looking.’

His voice was dull.

‘You need something else. You need to go on without me.’

‘I’ll not go anywhere without you,’ he said.

She struggled to talk, and I could hardly bear to hear the words.

‘You can’t decide what’s right for me any more,’ she said.

‘But I love you,’ he said, and began to weep.

Ailsa reached out and smudged the tears on his cheeks.

‘I love you too. But you have to go, Dad. They’re coming.’

‘Don’t make me go.’

‘For once,’ she whispered, ‘it’s my decision. My choice, Dad. I love you, but go.’

‘Ailsa …’

‘Go. I need to speak to Flora. Please.’

Hesitating, he looked at me. Tear tracks streamed a delta on his face. He kissed Ailsa on the forehead, on her cheeks, on her hair. I slumped to my knees beside them and, reluctantly, John eased her body from his care into mine. She weighed nothing. I held her upright with one arm. Her eyes were utterly dark and shining with tears. I had to lean close to hear her talk.

‘No more nights in the Bull, then?’

I coughed a laugh, but it caught in my mouth. She smiled. I brushed the hair back from her face. I was vaguely conscious of John splashing in the sea. In the moonlight, Ailsa’s face was ever stranger. Her skin was cold.

‘What are you?’ I whispered.

Still smiling, she studied my face. Her hand found my hand.

‘Does it make a difference?’

I remembered how our hands entwined beneath the water, and again locked fingers with her. The way she’d kissed me, hot with oxygen, the way she’d held me close and kept me safe. Ailsa raised her hand and touched my face. She took my chin and tried to bring our mouths together. I rested my forehead on hers, but didn’t kiss her. Her fingers brushed against my lips, lingering, and then she drew back.

‘I thought you were as lonely as me,’ she murmured.

I bit my lip. ‘I’m not ready for this.’

She managed another wan smile.

‘I’ve been ready since the day we met …’

Dark eyes. My hands. Here I am. Feet by my bed, and a soft voice singing in my head.

‘… but I don’t think it matters any more.’

I forced myself to meet her gaze. In her eyes, I saw an emptiness that only love could fill. Ailsa, always so different and strange, craved love. She needed so much love. She needed me.

I thought again of my grandfather, and how he’d been so scared of the selkie. The abyss of her need, the gulf of what she had to give, and what she needed in return. Sitting with Ailsa, I felt the same gulf open up beneath me. I felt myself teetering on the edge, ready to fall, ready to let it swallow me whole. The weight of her want drew me in like gravity.

It would be so easy to reach back. To kiss.

I couldn’t move.

Tears spilled from her eyes, and from mine. They vanished in the sand.

‘You saved my life,’ I said.

‘And you broke my heart.’

She smiled so sadly. Her gaze dropped towards the ocean. I peeked at her cuts. They oozed, still, and her skin was ice cold.

‘Help is coming. There’ll be an ambulance. You’ll be OK.’

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me that now, Flora Cannan.’

‘They’ll be here soon. They’ll be able to do someth—’

‘I love you,’ she said.

The words twisted deep inside.

‘I love you, Flora. With all my heart.’

The words felt insane. They hung between us. She gripped fast around my ribs. Her hair blew against my face, my mouth, and I let it.

I love you.

It would have been so easy to say it back.

I held her closer. She wouldn’t let me go. Her life slipped away. It pattered on the beach, and it flowed into the sea. The tide lapped closer and washed against us.

Even as her life flowed into the ocean, her eyes were dark as peat. And then Ailsa was numb weight. I hugged her tighter.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so so sorry.’

Here are my hands, Flora.

Her voice echoed in my skull, a thick, close whisper, the brush of lips against my ear.

The sirens whooped and sharpened. Red light, blue light, flickers on the sand. I could hear men shouting, yelling instructions.

Izzy had long since fallen quiet. He lay face down in the surf. The tide washed over his head, and the waves shifted beneath his body, spinning his bulk in quarter circles. I didn’t know or care how long he’d been under the water. I clung to Ailsa and let the ocean wash around me.

The men found us in the shallows, half in and half out of the sea.

John stood on the silver beach like a sentinel, pointing at something in the distance. I’d watched him long enough to turn to rust. When I finally looked in the direction he pointed, there she was. There was Ailsa.

On the shoreline, where the sand met the sea, sluiced over by the coming tide, lay a seal. In moonlit greys and blacks, it belly flopped in the surf, head raised above the flowing tide. It watched me so closely, the wide eyes looking directly at me. Fingertips appeared in the seamless fur, just below the head. Slowly, they peeled back the skin, revealing a hand, and then an arm, and then a skinny girl, soaked with sea. Her white skin glowed in the moonlight, even as the shallows washed around her sealskin. Cautious, Ailsa peered out at me. I could sense the sadness in her, ripe enough to touch. The world turned and the moon waltzed and the tides swelled and sank around us.

I woke slowly in my own bed, knowing there was someone with me. Someone was watching as I slept. Eyes straining in the gloom, I scanned the little room. I felt drained, exhausted. Everything was a dream. A light, uncertain rain tapped irregular rhythms on my window.

I remembered flinging the log into Izzy’s face. That part had been real. I played back the memories, shaping events into some kind of sense. I remembered crawling on the sand,
sobbing and calling out for help. Finding Ailsa and crawling along the beach, arm in arm. John Dobie, standing on the beach, squaring up to Izzy. I remembered the shennachie’s madness, the flickering blade. The stone. And Ailsa. Ailsa was gone.

The policemen had found us on the beach.

It had taken two of them to prise my fingers from her. I’d been brought back to Grogport by concerned, angry people I didn’t know. The constabulary were everywhere. Some doctor had given me a sedative and shooed the police away. Ronny carried me to bed, and my mum tucked me in. She waited for the pills to work, her face carved with concern, and blue lights from police cars flickered on the ceiling of my room. The pain melted away, and thick, dark sleep fell upon me in a wave.

I needed to pee. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, discovering all the aches and bruises of the previous night. Still feeling dizzy, I had to hold onto the wall to stand up. Standing by the bedroom door, having walked across the little room, I realised something was wrong. My feet were damp. I snapped on the light. Blinking in the glare, I looked down. On the carpet by my narrow bed were two kidney-shaped wet patches. Bare footprints, clearly marked in water. I bent down and dipped a finger. Salt. Sea water in my room.

As quietly as I could, I hobbled through the house to reach the bathroom. I flushed the toilet, and listened to the pipes quieten. The house shifted in its sleep. Was I dreaming? Back in my room, the footprints were evaporating. There were only toes and heels left on the carpet, as though I’d somehow imagined it. I slipped on a baggy sweater and some jeans, and made to leave the house.

From the hall, I could see a shape in the living room. I looked round the door.

‘Hi,’ I said. My voice was clogged with rust. I cleared my throat quietly, so as not to wake the baby.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said my mum. She sat in the dark, wee Jamie snuggled into her, as close as he could get, handfuls of her dressing gown clenched in his fists, fast asleep in the pre-morning gloom.

I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know where to begin, what to tell her of the things I’d seen and done. I didn’t know how to describe what had happened. About me, about the island. About Izzy and Lachlan. About John, about Ailsa. I didn’t even know how I felt about it myself.

‘Mum, listen. There are things I need to say—’

‘It’s all right, love,’ she interrupted.

‘Sorry?’

‘Just tell me when you’re ready.’

I blinked. ‘I’m ready now, Mum.’

‘There’s no rush,’ she said, and there was pleading in her voice.

I stared at her. Maybe this wasn’t the right time, but there would never be one better. There was a new division between us. I realised, with a sudden rush of sadness, that she was scared of me. She’d seen the bruises on my body, the network of grass cuts on my face. She was scared of what I’d been through, and what I might have done. I’d grown up in a way she would never understand.

She was scared of what I had to tell her.

‘OK, Mum,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

She gave me a smile, and I knew we’d never speak of it again.

‘You going out again? How do you feel?’

‘Sore, but I can’t sleep. And I think there’s someone I need to see.’

She nodded. I reached over and touched her cheek, then
reached down and briefly held Jamie’s little foot. His breathing altered, snuffling a little, then he nestled deeper into Mum’s dressing gown. He was safe and warm and happy. He was my half-brother, but that meant he was half not my brother. He had his mum and dad. If I were to leave now, and never return, he wouldn’t remember me. He’d be fine. I turned for the door. I was pulling on my coat when she called out to me.

‘Flora?’ she called. I stuck my head back around the door.

‘Yes, Mum?’

‘You know I love you,’ she said, hesitant, ‘don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course I know.’

She leaned back in her chair and looked down on her baby. It was hard to tell in the lightening murk, but she might have been smiling.

The air outside was mild and fresh. A dull pink fringe of sunrise coasted along the horizon. Soon it would be day. A police car was parked outside the house, speckled with beads of rain. In the back seat, Detective Constable Tom Duncan was fast asleep, huddled into one of Mum’s blankets. His pink, honest face wrinkled briefly in sleep, then smoothed and settled. He’d blown his big case. He would want answers and evidence, explanations and proof. He’d want to talk to me.

Walking pumped the life into my limbs. I limped down the single-track road, each step loosening and strengthening my stride. I swung my arms as an experiment. It hurt, but in a healthy way. My body would heal.

I couldn’t yet fathom the space inside my heart, the ache of absence.

I walked down the road towards my headland, retracing last night’s route to the beach. It was a threshold, tides blurring the boundaries of what was land and what was sea. I walked a few hundred metres on the road, then cut across into the grass. Surf fizzed quietly on the beach.

When I emerged from the grass, there was a dark figure sitting hunched on the headland. Stepping from the dip of the dune onto the headland, I increased my pace, feeling suddenly exposed – to the wind, to the sea – to the ebb and flow of my own heart. A few paces away, I pulled up short beside the seated figure. He seemed older and smaller.

‘John,’ I said. ‘Are you OK?’

His eyes were bloodshot.

‘No. She’s gone.’

‘I know.’

‘I’ve been cut in two, Flora.’

Pangs shot through me, even to think of her. But there had been wet feet by my bed. She’d been there in my dream.