This Northern Sky (6 page)

I scurry after him.

Piers drives fast. But you can see for miles that there’s nothing coming: just a few cows and sheep grazing on the grass either side of the single-track road, and he knows every pothole and bump by heart. We rattle over the cattle grid at the beginning of the village. Piers pulls over at a passing place to let a van go by, and then we’re passing the shop and the museum and we’re back at the house. He stops on the grass by the gate. ‘There you go. See you soon.’

Thea leans over and kisses my cheek. ‘Yes, come again soon, Kate. It’s much more fun with lots of people.’

‘Thanks for everything,’ I say. ‘Say thanks to Finn for me too.’

‘I will.’ She smiles. ‘I don’t know why he didn’t say goodbye.’

‘Because he’s Finn,’ Piers says.

I watch them drive off. Piers toots the horn and a flock of little brown speckled birds take off from the grass all together, twittering madly.

I take a deep breath and go inside.

Seven

‘Where have you been all this time?’ Mum says, the moment I set foot in the door. ‘We’ve been worried sick.’

‘I left you a note.’

‘This morning, yes! It is now nearly half past seven in the evening, Kate!’

‘Sorry,’ I say. Though I don’t see why I should be. ‘I didn’t think you’d mind me having a nice time.’

‘What does that mean?’ Mum looks furious.

‘Nothing,’ I say innocently. ‘But you and Dad are doing your own thing . . . I thought you’d be pleased I was too.’

She calms down a bit, recovers herself. ‘Yes, well, of course I’m pleased you’re meeting people and having fun. I was worried, that’s all.’

‘Well, don’t be. There’s no need to worry. Not about me, anyway.’ I go upstairs before she can say anything back, and get my things ready for a shower. Only there’s no hot water.

I lie on my bed instead, and listen to the sound of the sea through the open skylight. I let my mind go over the day; gather all the fragments together and relive each moment. The messy, comfortable kitchen. Fishing with Finn. Making the fire. Running along the beach with Finn. Finn cooking the silver mackerel. The sweet smell of woodsmoke and charred fish. Everyone talking and laughing and drinking and eating together. The rhythmic sound of waves rolling on to the shore.

I put my hand in my jeans’ pocket and look more closely at the pebble that Finn gave me. It was wet and shiny before; now it has dried and faded, but it’s still pretty: charcoal grey speckled with silvery sparkly bits. He made me close my eyes, and open my hand. He closed my fingers over the damp pebble, and for a second he held his hand over mine. It felt warm, and comforting.

Sam’s face swims into my mind . . . I open my eyes abruptly.

Dad’s calling up the stairs. ‘Kate? We thought we’d go out to the hotel for dinner tonight. Can you be ready in half an hour or so?’

I go to the top of the stairs. ‘I’ve already eaten,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not hungry.’

Dad frowns. ‘You sure? What did you have?’

‘Barbecue food,’ I say. ‘Fish and sausages and vegetable kebabs. Masses of it. I’m totally full up.’

‘OK,’ he says slowly. ‘Well, do you mind if we go out without you, then?’

‘?’Course not,’ I say. I don’t say I’m glad. In my heart I’m willing them to try harder, to be fun and nice to each other. Like they used to be.

I imagine Finn’s family at the Manse, playing games and listening to Piers on the piano and talking intelligently about books and films and music.

I listen to Mum getting herself ready to go out. That’s a good sign. She’s putting make-up on in the bathroom, chatting away. It will be so much better, just the two of them eating dinner together. Maybe Mum will have wine, and relax, get giggly, lighten up a bit.

When they’ve gone, I switch the boost on the water heater, so I can have a long, hot bath. I leave a trail of fine silver sand behind me all the way down the stairs, and a bigger heap when I strip off my jeans in the bathroom.

After my bath, I flick through the pile of leaflets about the island on the living room table. Finn would know all this sort of stuff. It says about Viking raids, and Norse settlers. Gaelic names, and Viking ones. There’s another leaflet about birds.

I sit in the window seat, with its view of the sea, all the way out to the islands. They look further away this evening: grey, low on the horizon under a grey sky. The sea looks grey too, with white flecks on the waves. The tide’s coming back in; the waves break in long smooth lines along the beach, spreading out over the sand in shallow white froth. A break in the cloud lets a ray of sunlight through, catching the water and turning it silver.

It’s late when I hear Mum and Dad come back in. They talk in soft voices; I can’t hear what they’re saying but Mum laughs. Good. Doors open and close. It goes quiet again. I relax back into sleep.

Much later, I wake in the pitch dark to the sound of the wind battering the house so hard that everything’s shaking. The sea is roaring. Rain spatters against the skylights. The storm lasts all night: every time I wake, the wind seems louder, howling and crying as if it’s a wild animal that wants to be let in.

Eight

By morning the rain has stopped and the sky is clearing. I get out of bed and go downstairs: no one else is up. There’s no sound from Mum and Dad’s room. That’s hopeful, I guess. I make tea and toast, then put on my boots and step outside. I set off up the road away from the village, no real plan. The air smells clean, rain-washed.

I’m zinging with energy. It’s as if the night storm has cleared something in me too. I’ve suddenly come to life again: my senses awake in a different way. I know this sounds weird, but it’s as if the colour has come back in: brighter, sharper. I’m seeing everything more vividly as I walk along, like a film, except that I am in the film and I can hear and smell as well as see it all. A dazzling patch of sunlight on sea; a flock of geese grazing along the grass next to a shining stretch of puddle on the field; small brown birds flitting from one fence post to another. The geese start honking and all take off in flight, necks outstretched, wings slowly beating together.

The island is almost flat just here, and there’s this huge overarching sky, clouds moving fast, light changing every second, bringing different things into focus, like a spotlight. A white house; the sweep of pale sand; the grassy dunes, a line of telegraph poles; the gleaming ribbon of wet road.

A small red fishing boat is making its way out of the old harbour, pitching and dropping as it ploughs through the waves. I think about what Finn said, about going out in his boat to get cockles. Will he remember?

I stop at a fork in the road. Which way?

A brown hare races across the field to the left: I go that way. The road curves round, over a small hill and then back down the other side, to a part of the island I haven’t seen before. There are houses scattered along the road, none of them close together. Everywhere you look, in fact, there are small white houses, tucked in corners of fields, or against a bank. Crofters, I suppose. I try to remember what Alex was saying about them yesterday, on the beach. Something about the land being divided up into crofts and each one having a mixture of different kinds of ground: fertile bits and less fertile, and an area of peat bank, all shared out fairly. I should have listened more carefully.

I try to imagine what it might be like, to love a particular place as much as Finn seems to. I’ve always lived in the suburbs, in a sort of non-place: mostly housing estates, long straight roads hemmed in by brick and concrete and glass buildings. Shops, garages, warehouses, takeaway places, cafés, pubs. Roads full of traffic – that roaring sound always in the background, of cars, and sirens; planes overhead – the sky scored by vapour trails. There’s the park near Sam’s nan’s house, where we used to go sometimes, our special tree . . .

What will Sam be doing today? He hasn’t phoned or texted once. I don’t even know where he’s living, now his nan won’t let him stay at her place overnight . . .

Is he angry?

Is he missing me?

Does he think about me
at all
?

They’ll be waking up in the Manse. Coming down for breakfast together in the cosy kitchen. Perhaps Piers and Thea are still sleeping . . . are they girlfriend and boyfriend? I couldn’t tell yesterday. They seemed close, but I didn’t see them touch or hold hands or kiss. Maybe posh people don’t do that in public. Maybe it’s not polite.

It begins to drizzle. I pull up the hood on my jacket. No one’s going to see so it doesn’t matter what I look like. The road narrows; there’s another cattle grid to cross, and a cluster of houses sheltering behind a thick hedge. The view opens up again suddenly: a ruined house, a broad stretch of flowering meadow above a wide sandy beach. The sea is turquoise-blue even in the rain. Fingers of rock dissect the white sweep of shell sand. Beyond, other islands: layers upon layers of islands, a whole archipelago.

I shelter in the ruined house for a while to see if the rain stops. But it doesn’t, and so I go on in the rain, along the grassy path to the left, round the top of the beach, past a herd of black shaggy-haired cows and calves, along and on and on next to the sea. All the way, I find smaller beaches, sheltered sandy coves. I must have walked miles, and I’ve seen no one.

The rain stops and I clamber down over rocks on to a small beach and sit there, watching the sea and the changing light, until even the birds stop noticing me. Little scurrying brown ones like I saw before, and black and white ones with red legs, and smaller ones that swoop and weave through the air like sea swallows.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. No signal. I realise I haven’t checked my phone for over twenty-four hours.

‘A boy called,’ Dad tells me when I get back. He’s sitting outside the house at the wooden picnic table, reading the newspaper.

‘Was it Finn?’ I ask.

‘He didn’t say his name. Dark-haired, about your age.’

‘And? What did he say?’

‘I think he was going to invite you to something, but as you weren’t here, he didn’t.’

‘What was it? The something.’

‘He didn’t say. At least, I don’t think he did.’

‘Dad! How can you be so annoying! How long ago was he here?’

‘An hour ago? Where did you go so early, anyway?’

‘I went for a walk.’

Dad smiles. ‘Yes, but where to?’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know the names of everywhere, do I? Just a walk across the island. Right to the other side.’

I go inside to find Mum. She doesn’t know any more than Dad does. She makes me eat more breakfast, which I do, seeing as I only had toast and I’ve been walking for hours and I’m suddenly starving.

‘Would you like us to hire you a bike?’ Mum says. ‘Then you could get around more easily by yourself. It would only take about ten minutes to cycle to the Manse from here, and you could find out what Finn wanted.’

But I’ve used up all my energy. And I don’t want to look so pathetically desperate, chasing after Finn. I lie on my bed and read one of the magazines from the pile under the telly table.

I keep wondering what I’m missing. The boat trip? Another barbecue? The peat-cutting expedition? Now I wish I hadn’t got up so early and gone out for so long.

‘Kate?’ Mum calls upstairs. ‘We thought we’d get bikes for all three of us. After lunch. It’ll be fun. We can explore a bit further afield.’

‘No thanks,’ I call back. ‘You and Dad should, though.’

Because maybe he’ll come back. Perhaps they’ll be driving somewhere, and will drop in here first, on the off-chance. I can’t help myself hoping.

But no one calls. The day drifts away. I watch the bit of beach you can see from the front window. A fishing boat goes out, stacked high with red and orange buoys, and men in yellow waterproofs balancing as the boat bucks and tips. It begins to rain again. The sky is grey, except far out to sea there’s a strip of bright silver where sunlight must be shining through. Next time I look, it’s gone.

Dad comes back first, freewheeling down the last bit of road before the village. He gets off and wheels the bike over the grass to the gate. He waves at me at the window as he goes past and I wave back. He’s dripping wet. He stamps his feet in the porch and swears under his breath.

‘What happened to Mum?’ I ask him.

‘Stopped to shelter. Put the kettle on, Kate.’

He tells me about the bike ride while I make us tea. Four seals in the bay over the other side from here; they met someone who’d seen basking sharks.

‘Why didn’t you wait for Mum?’

‘You know what she’s like. She wanted me to go on; she’s so much slower than I am.’

‘Honestly, Dad!’

He shrugs.

I still don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to slow down and go along beside her. It’s what most people would do, wouldn’t they? Even with someone who was just a friend. It’s not as if there’s any rush. The whole point is doing something
together
.

When she finally gets back, Mum’s in a foul mood. There was something wrong with the bike. She had to push the last two miles. She’s practically in tears.