This Northern Sky Page 2

  In any case, Sam will hardly be desperate to see me, will he? Not with me being a witness and everything . . . So Mum and Dad needn’t worry any more. Not about me, at least.

  ‘You go for your stupid walk,’ I say. ‘I’m not coming.’

  But I do go out, later. I walk away from the village down the single-track road and come across a huge beach of white sand with a fringe of grey-green grass. I walk along the sand, and after a while I find this rock shaped like a kind of bowl, big enough to lie in. It’s the perfect shape and size so I can stretch right out, my head held by the curve of stone, my feet resting on the bottom lip. The rock is warm from the sun. I lie there, cradled in stone, trying not to think too much about Mum and Dad, all the stuff going on. The words they don’t say. The undercurrents of anger and the clipped conversations and the way they look at each other.

  Suppose this really is the last holiday we have together?

  I let my mind drift off in all the space and light. I have never seen so much sky. The tide’s coming in. Waves splash on the rocks further down, tug and grind and pound, a rhythm of sound. I close my eyes.

  It might be OK, the waves say, and my heartbeat steadies at last.

  I take a deep breath in.

  Let it out.

  Repeat.

  I stay there for ages, eyes shut.

  Perhaps I actually do go to sleep. Something makes me jolt – as if I’m falling. A new sound, not waves or wind or seabirds – a pattern of feet on sand and rock. I open my eyes. A boy – about sixteen or seventeen – is running along the shore. He doesn’t see me. He’s playing some sort of game, it looks like: he hops, left foot, right foot, both feet together. He misses his footing for a second, slips, and pebbles spill and scatter from his pockets: a clatter of stone on stone. He laughs, picks up the pebbles and stuffs them back in his jeans’ pockets, runs on.

  Once he’s disappeared round the curve of the bay, I ease myself out of my stone bed. My legs are stiff from lying still for so long. I cross the strip of grass and wild flowers at the top of the beach, start walking back towards the house.

  Almost there.

  Mum and Dad are standing side by side in the small front garden. They’re not touching. Not speaking either. You could fit a third person in the space between them.

  Mum’s seen me. She waves.

  Dad puts his hands in his pockets, goes back into the house.

  Have they been arguing again? I can’t tell from here.

  Mum walks the short distance to meet me.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she says. ‘Is it coming back to you now? Did you remember the beach?’

  ‘Not really,’ I say. The truth is, I don’t remember any of it.

  Mum sighs. ‘All those wonderful summers when you were little and we were so happy all together, but you don’t remember?’

  ‘Bonnie and Hannah do,’ I say. ‘They were that much older.’

  Mum looks sad. ‘And yet neither of them would come this time.’

  ‘They’re busy with their own lives now,’ I say. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Well,’ Mum says too brightly. ‘Dad’s been to the one and only shop already and stocked up. He’s making supper tonight. He insisted.’

  My mind flips into overdrive again. Dad – cooking and shopping? Anyone else would think how lovely, how kind: Dad’s making an effort. But I’ve already clocked the fact that next to the shop is a public telephone box. In my mind, I see Dad talking softly into the mouthpiece of the old-fashioned phone in the red kiosk, half turning to check no one is watching him. It’s like a scene in a bad film on telly: the stupid clichéd image of an affair.

  I don’t know any of this for sure.

  I’m just guessing.

  I’m not supposed to take sides, Bonnie says. Mum and Dad both love us; it’s not about us.

  Mum and I stop at the gate and we both turn at the same time towards the sea.

  We just stand there for a while without saying anything.

  ‘It won’t get properly dark till really late, and in hardly any time at all it will be dawn again,’ Mum says, ‘because we are so far north.’

  The air feels cool and thin. We’re a very long way from home. For a second, I like this sense of being at an edge, remote and out of reach. It keeps Dad safe, and away from anyone else; closer to Mum. Maybe Mum’s right. Maybe that is all that’s needed. Four weeks of them being together, no one getting in the way. I can leave them to it . . .

  Except, what am I going to do?

  A flock of black and white birds fly low across the bay making a high piping sound. That boy is coming back along the top of the beach. He looks up and waves as if he knows us and keeps on running.

  Mum waves back. ‘He’ll be one of the lads from the Manse, I expect,’ she says to me. ‘The big house we saw as the ferry came in, that used to belong to the church.’

  ‘What, he lives there?’

  ‘Only in the holidays. He’ll be away at school in England somewhere, I imagine, like his brothers used to be. Twin boys, Bonnie’s age, I think. Funny, I’d forgotten all about them. But he looks just like one of the twins.’

  I can’t imagine anyone choosing to live here for real: it’s so far from the mainland, so difficult to get to. All that’s here is a few houses, and farms, I suppose, seeing as there are sheep and cows wandering all over the place. Beaches, yes, but nothing else.

  Mum’s still talking. ‘They used to have house-parties at the Manse. Their rich friends came and stayed all summer. It looked such fun . . . you know, lots of games on the beach and barbecues and boats and things like that.’

  I watch the boy as he runs on. He looks OK. I think of Sam, back home. Not now, don’t think about him now. But the ache in my heart won’t go away so easily.

  Three

  I am Kate, named for my grandmother who died just before I was born, which meant that when I was a newborn baby Mum was still grieving for her own mother. Mum likes to tell me that my grandmother, Kate, did see me once, kind of: the small, grainy photograph taken at the thirteen-week scan of me as a tiny foetus inside Mum’s womb. So she knew about you, and was happy that you were on your way, and she would have loved you very deeply.

  I am small and dark-haired like my grandmother in the old photos of her, and like Mum too, whereas my sisters, Bonnie and Hannah, are both fair and tall like Dad. They are five and seven years older than me: I was the surprise baby.

  Every birthday I have, Mum thinks about Grandma and remembers her death all over again. She says it often happens in families, that there’s a death and a birth very close together, as if one soul makes room for the other. Or as if . . . and she looks at me, as if . . .

  As if what? The soul of my grandmother is reborn in me, or something? That’s a weird thought. Like recycling people. Dad has this phrase: what goes around comes around. I suppose it’s like believing in reincarnation and karma: you might come back as an insect or a bird or something worse. But I think I am uniquely me, not a version of my grandma, or anyone else for that matter. Newly arrived when I was first made. When I die, I’ll disappear for ever, not be reborn in a different body. That’s what I think.

  There is going to be a lot of time for thinking on the island. Too much. I’m writing things down in the notebook Dad gave me on my birthday. My thoughts come out quite randomly sometimes. Like one idea runs into another and then they both skip off somewhere unexpected, and I have to pull them back and make them be sensible and stay on the lines. (There aren’t any lines really: it’s a notebook with creamy blank pages, and a copper, black and gold hardback cover, very beautiful. Dad knows how to choose stationery at least).

  I decided that I would write down everything that happens in this, my sixteenth summer, at least until the pages run out. Today is July 27th, but I’m not going to put all the dates. I have even given it a title: The Story of My Heart. It’s borrowed from a real book, one with a leather binding and old-fashioned print, which lives on a shelf in Dad’s office. I h
aven’t read it or anything: I just like the title. I like the feeling of writing things down too. It anchors me, this act of writing, and makes me feel more substantial and real, part of things. Especially now, with everything falling apart. It stops me from feeling as if I’m nothing and nobody, as if I might simply be blown away by the wind.

  Almost dark: the sky through the skylight window is a thin blue-grey. Wind rattles the frame. It’s starting to get at me, that wind. It never gives up. Now I’m lying down I’ve got that rocking feeling again as if I’m still travelling, bobbing up and down on water.

  Dad is reading downstairs, Mum went to bed ages ago. I don’t understand why she doesn’t make at least a bit of an effort. Even at supper she seemed quiet and distracted, as if her mind was elsewhere. Dad had cooked lamb chops and new potatoes and beans and there were raspberries and cream for pudding and she didn’t say anything at all about how nice it was.

  Someone – Mum? – has put a pile of books on the shelf by my bed – nothing I want to read – plus a load of random DVDs. I scan the titles. Deep Blue; Juno; Into the Wild, Cinema Paradiso, Fargo; My Summer of Love. On the other shelf there’s a collection of pebbles and fragments of polished sea glass: blue, amber, green.

  I remember that boy from the Manse. Maybe I’ll walk over there in the morning.

  Just to see what the house is like.

  Just because it’s something to do, that’s all.

  Four

  Mum and Dad are having some sort of horrible row downstairs. It’s been going on and on for hours, it seems. Shouting first, and then quiet sobbing, and now raised voices I can hear even with the pillow wrapped round my ears. Words fly out like sparks.

  No!

  Why not?

  Trust . . .

  Unbearable.

  I stand on the bed so I can push open the skylight and let the sound of the sea wash over me instead, and feel the air – sharp as a blade this early morning. I get dressed – jeans, jumper, even though it’s summer – and run down the stairs and out of the door so I don’t have to see either of them or hear any more angry words.

  I don’t care where I go – I just need to get away fast. A bike would be good but there isn’t one so I start running. The sheep sheltering next to the fence scatter, baaing at me as I rush past. ‘Stupid things!’ I shout, and the wind whips my words away like the gulls, blown and buffeted as if they’re just scraps of white paper.

  I’m already in the village – village is a huge overstatement – before I even think where I’m going. I’m suddenly self-conscious. People outside the shop are staring at me. I slow down. I guess they don’t see that many strangers. They nod when I get nearer, and say Good Morning in that soft accent they have here. I keep my head down, don’t say anything. Soon as I’m past the shop and the telephone kiosk I start running again.

  The road goes over a cattle grid and up a hill. I keep running until my ribs ache. At the top I stop to catch my breath. You can see for miles. The road ribbons its way over the rough moorland; a narrow track forks off and winds all the way back down to the sea and along towards a large white house set on a higher bit of ground. That must be the Manse; Mum pointed it out when the ferry came in, all lit up even at that late hour.

  I can see someone fishing off the rocks. I suddenly wish I’d brought a book or something to do, and then I remember the notebook shoved in my pocket so that’s OK. I can just go and sit by the sea somewhere and write and I won’t look too weird. Then I can work out what to do next. There’s no way I’m going back yet.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. Up here you can get a signal, then. For a second I let myself hope it’s from Sam.

  It’s a message from Bonnie.

  U OK? Have fun! Hope sun shining. xx

  I send one back. Windy! No sun yet. I pause. I can’t tell Bonnie that Mum and Dad are arguing already. I think what to say instead. Do you remember twin boys at the Manse?

  Bonnie’s working this summer on some organic farm in northern Spain. Hannah has a proper job in London. I thought I’d got used to my sisters being away, but it’s been much harder this year. Sometimes I make myself think what to do if things get really bad. Like if Mum and Dad actually split up. There’s no way I am going to choose which one to live with. I might go and live with Hannah in her flat in London, if she’ll have me. Bonnie and I are closer really, but Bonnie lives in a messy student house and there’s no spare room.

  Another text from Bonnie. Yes! Weird, remembering. Have u met them?

  I start walking towards the Manse. Might as well go that way as any other. I try sending a reply to Bonnie, but there’s no signal. I guess I’m not high enough now. I feel like a tiny ant, a dot on the landscape. No trees. Nowhere to hide. Anyone looking could see me arriving for miles. The figure fishing off the rocks has disappeared.

  Closer up, the Manse looks a bit tatty and dilapidated. It’s a big house with a walled garden, but the plaster’s peeling off the walls. There’s no sign of any one there. But it’s early enough for people to be in bed still on a Sunday morning. Or at church. Maybe they all go to church. Everyone’s very religious on the island, Mum says. You can’t work on a Sunday: you’re not even supposed to hang out the washing.

  The sound of a car makes me stop. It’s an old black taxicab, slowly bumping down the track. I stand back to let it pass, and the driver slows right down, winds down the window and does that old-fashioned thing of lifting his hat, being ever so polite. An old bloke, about fifty, with grey hair and a tweed hat and a weather-beaten face.

  ‘Much obliged,’ he says. ‘Can we offer you a lift somewhere?’

  ‘No thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Enjoying the views?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The woman in the passenger seat leans over and smiles. ‘You’re here for the holidays?’

  I nod.

  ‘We’ll see you again, then.’

  They drive on, bouncing and juddering over the rough ground. I watch them go. The car – taxi – turns into the space by the edge of the Manse and the man and the woman get out and go into the house. The woman’s small, grey-haired, wearing a green woolly jumper and a purple skirt. They don’t look smart or rich or anything like what I expected from what Mum said.

  The boy with the fishing rod walks across the grass and goes into the house too. I’m pretty sure it’s the same boy I saw before. Thin dark hair, blue jumper.

  What now? I’m cold and starting to get hungry. But it’s too soon to walk back. I walk on, past the Manse, and along next to the sea, and on, and on, even though my feet are tired and I don’t know where I’m heading any more.

  I find a sheltered place to sit, out of the wind and hidden from view. I write in my notebook for a while. When I next look up, the ferry’s crossing the Sound, coming slowly towards the island. I watch it come closer, turn and manoeuvre to get into position for docking at the tiny island pier.

  I’m so caught up with it that I don’t hear the sound of bike wheels until they’re right up close and the boy has got off and is coming towards me, smiling. One of the bike wheels spins slowly where he left it on the edge of the track.

  ‘Hey!’ he says. ‘You again!’

  He climbs on the rock next to mine. ‘The ferry’s nearly in,’ he says. ‘My brother will be arriving.’ He looks at me. ‘You’re staying in the village: Fiona’s house.’

  It’s a statement; I don’t need to answer luckily. For some reason I’m suddenly feeling shy. I notice his eyes: clear, grey-blue. I twist my messy, wind-blown hair back from my face.

  ‘I’m Finn,’ he says. ‘From the Manse.’

  ‘My sisters knew your brothers,’ I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

  He looks at me more closely.

  ‘Way back, when they were seven and nine,’ I add. ‘I was just a baby.’

  ‘Ah. Ages ago, then,’ Finn says. He sounds English; only the very slightest hint of something else. ‘You look cold. What are you doing? You’ve been there for ages.’<
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  I look at him sharply. What business is it of his? I don’t like the thought of being watched. I’d thought I was hidden, leant against the rock.

  ‘Why do I have to be doing anything?’ I say. It comes out wrong, makes me sound crosser than I am.

  ‘You don’t,’ Finn says. ‘Sorry. Anyway, I’ve got to go down to the pier now or I’ll miss them. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too.’ I’m embarrassed now about sounding rude. But I can’t think what else to say.

  He’s still hovering there, as if he’s waiting for something.

  ‘I’m Kate,’ I say, to break the silence.

  ‘Nice name,’ he says. He picks up the bike, gets on, pedals off.

  I get up, pick up my bag. Meeting him has unsettled me, somehow. I’m too restless to stay sitting there by myself. Too cold. If the ferry is in, the café might open up, and I can get a coffee at least. I make my way along the shore: a short cut back to the village which I couldn’t see before. Only it’s hard work, walking on damp sand into the wind, and it takes almost as long as the road in the end. I think about the boy called Finn: well-spoken, a bit like the man in the cab who I guess is his dad. Private school, loaded. You can tell that from how confident he is. So, they’re one big happy family all on holiday together. About as different from me as I can imagine.

  The café is open. It’s like something out of the 1950s. No cappuccino machine or anything, just coffee from a tin and big china teapots and cups and saucers and tablecloths. At least it’s warm and out of the wind and the man behind the counter makes me a toasted sandwich with bacon and the whole thing costs less than £2.50 which you’d never get back home. No, we can’t sell you a whisky, he tells some old bloke off the ferry; not on a Sunday. You know that.

  I sit at the window. I’m half looking out for Finn and his brother. Three cars go past with older couples in, and then a muddy jeep driven by a bloke about Bonnie’s age with a girl in the front passenger seat and I can’t see who else. I guess that might be them, but there’s no sign of Finn or his bike.