‘You didn’t have to be scared, you know,’ he tells me, brushing a loose bit of hair behind my ear. ‘I’d never let anything happen to you.’
I nod. ‘What did you find?’ I ask. ‘Any bodies?’
He shakes his head, looking disappointed. ‘I couldn’t get very far. It looks like the tunnel’s caved in.’
‘At least you found it, though,’ I tell him.
He shrugs, obviously disappointed.
‘I found something too,’ I tell him. ‘Come and see.’
I lead him out of the chapel and around to the gravestones I discovered. I point at the names and watch the surprise flash across his face. ‘They died,’ I tell him.
‘I can see that,’ he replies.
‘What do you think happened?’ I ask.
‘Maybe they died in the fire?’
‘That’s what I thought too,’ I say.
‘We should get back.’ Liam turns towards the woods. ‘It’s almost lunchtime. And I’m starving.’
We walk back through the trees towards the cottage, hand in hand, feet crunching over leaves that are already starting to turn orange and drift to the ground ahead of autumn’s arrival. I catch a sudden darting shadow in the corner of my eye.
‘What was that?’ I ask, stopping suddenly, tugging my hand from Liam’s and pointing to the bushes up ahead.
‘What?’ Liam asks, looking in the direction I’m pointing.
‘I thought I saw something,’ I say.
Liam glances around. ‘It was probably just a rabbit.’
I shake my head. ‘No, it was bigger than that.’
‘A pheasant then. I think there are some on the island. Or maybe a fox.’
We stop and listen for a few moments but all we can hear is the wind stirring the branches of the trees.
‘I’m just being silly,’ I laugh.
We keep on walking, but the whole time I can’t shake the sense that we’re being watched. I think about what the men in the pub said about the island being haunted. It definitely feels as if we’re being followed by something.
Chapter Seven
After lunch Liam picks up the history book from the coffee table and starts to read it. ‘This is interesting,’ he says after a time. ‘The monks lived on the island from the ninth century through until the 1500s, raising cattle and fishing in the loch to sustain themselves. The abbey was raided several times by Vikings looking to pillage and steal the monastery’s wealth.’
I imagine how terrifying that must have been for the monks, with nowhere to flee to. Did they just sit and pray and accept their fate? Or did they try to hide as the Vikings attacked? Did any of them try to fight back?
‘Listen to this,’ Liam goes on, eagerly. ‘“The monks were said to have buried the monastery’s treasure on the island to hide it. This myth has endured since the fifteenth century.”’
I glance at him. I know he’s thinking about searching for it, but he doesn’t say as much; he just keeps turning the pages of the book.
Later in the afternoon we head back out to the beach in front of the cottage. The sun is still warm, and Liam looks relaxed and happy as he sits beside me on the blanket sipping from a bottle of beer. He spots a flat stone and expertly skims it across the surface of the loch. We watch it bounce a half-dozen times and I cheer. He searches for more flat stones within reach and then tries to teach me, showing me how to angle my wrist and flick with one smooth motion, but I’m not very good and my stone sinks beneath the waves without even bouncing once.
Liam skims another one eight times to show me how it’s done. ‘I wonder what the world record is,’ he says. ‘If we had the internet, we’d be able to look it up.’ He looks a little put out that he can’t discover the world record and I know it’s because he’d like the challenge of being able to beat it.
‘I’m glad we don’t,’ I tell him. ‘It’s nice being cut off from the world.’
‘What if something happens though?’ he asks, scouring around him for more flat stones to skim.
‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘World War Three could break out, and we wouldn’t know about it.’
‘We’d probably be better off not knowing,’ I laugh. ‘It’s not as if we could do anything about it. It’s like stepping back in time here,’ I add. ‘And the Celts and the monks didn’t have phones or the internet.’
Liam nods. ‘Back then they had to rely on signal fires to warn of approaching threats.’ He finds a stone and flicks it across the water, frowning when it only bounces three times before sinking. ‘Damn,’ he mutters.
‘I’ll look for more stones,’ I tell him, getting up and wandering up the beach.
‘Make sure they’re flat,’ he calls after me.
My hunt takes me further along the beach towards the gnarly trees that mark its end. After stooping to pick up a good-sized pebble I stand and catch a glimpse of what looks like a man, standing among the trees. I blink and the person has vanished. I blink a few more times, my certainty that I saw someone fading. There’s no one there now, that’s for sure, but where could they have disappeared to?
I turn around and head back to Liam, who is standing with his back to me, knees bent slightly, body angled, perfecting his throwing stance. I watch him skim a stone and count the number of times it hits the surface of the water.
‘Twelve!’ he shouts, pumping his fist and looking around at me for a sign that I’ve witnessed his triumph.
‘I saw!’ I say, feigning excitement.
He grins and then picks up another stone to throw. I walk towards him, the small pile of stones I’ve managed to gather clinking in my pockets. My gaze lands just then on the cairn that I built. Something about it catches my attention and as I get closer, I see that it’s because it looks different to how I left it.
I stop and study it. I remember the stone I put on the top was unusual; washed almost white and a perfect flat oval shape. But now another stone sits on top.
I kneel down in front of the cairn and notice the white, oval-shaped stone that I put on top is lying a few feet away. I lean over to pick it up and put it back on the top of the pile, where it was before.
‘You OK?’
I startle and look up. Liam is standing over me.
I nod and smile at him, hurrying to stand up. ‘Here,’ I say, handing over the flat skimming stones I found for him. ‘Try these. I think they’re flat enough.’
Liam studies the pile I dump into his hands, discarding a couple that don’t pass muster. ‘Thanks,’ he says and turns and hurries back to the shore.
As he walks away, I glance quickly back over my shoulder at the treeline, but of course there’s nothing there.
‘Watch this!’ Liam says.
I turn and hurry after him.
Later that night, I lie beside Liam who has fallen asleep quickly. I can’t manage to drift off though. My memory flashes to the man I thought I saw standing among the trees on the beach; there one moment and gone the next. Was I imagining it? Could the anti-depressants be causing me to have paranoid thoughts? Or maybe I’m on edge and the ghost stories those men in the pub told me have aggravated my nerves.
A month or so ago the same thing happened. I was standing at the sink in the kitchen chopping carrots when I had a sudden feeling that I was being spied on. I even started to wonder if perhaps my mother’s ghost was hovering around, keeping an eye on me. I didn’t tell Liam that time either.
I ease out of bed and tiptoe towards the window. Slowly, I draw back the curtain. Outside there’s pitch blackness, broken only by a smattering of stars.
I laugh at myself for believing in ghosts, then pull the curtain across and slip back into bed.
The Stalker
She was just standing at the window looking out. I like watching her when she doesn’t know she’s being watched.
I watched her on the beach today as she walked along, pausing now and then to pick up stones, her blonde hair whipping about her slender neck as though it was tr
ying to strangle her. I must admit, the thought made me tingle with something halfway between pleasure and pain.
I thought I caught her looking right at me, and I smile as I recall the fear that flashed across her face for an instant. I breathe in deep. I can still smell that fear, lingering in the air.
If she was an animal, she’d be a bird, soft feathered, fragile boned, easily caught and caged. I smile at the idea. She’s caged right now. Inside the cottage. On the island. There’s no way off. No escape.
Chapter Eight
Day Three
Liam carries the picnic basket that I found in the cupboard under the stairs and I clutch the blanket. We make our way through the forest towards the beach on the northern side of the island where we walked on the first day we arrived. I woke up this morning and in the cold light of day decided I was letting my imagination run far too wild.
‘Do you know what today is?’ Liam asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, smiling at him. ‘August 26th. Our eight-month anniversary.’
It feels longer because we’ve been through so much. I’ve made a special anniversary picnic for us to celebrate: cheese and pickle sandwiches, a chicken salad, and some freshly made shortbread that I cooked up this morning – Liam’s favourite. Liam slipped in two bottles of beer as well, though I only intend to have a sip of mine.
At the beach we set the picnic basket down and lay out the blanket, weighing it down with stones on the corners. It’s another glorious day, though blustery. ‘So much for that boatman’s prediction about the weather,’ Liam laughs. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ he imitates in a thick Scottish brogue.
‘Shall we go for a walk up the beach before we have lunch?’ I ask him.
‘Sure,’ he says, and we stroll along together hand in hand.
‘I wonder if I could swim over to that island,’ Liam says, pointing to a small craggy island no bigger than a tennis court that sits about a hundred metres out from shore.
‘Why would you want to?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘Because.’
How could I forget how competitive Liam is, even when there’s no one to compete against? He doesn’t like being told he can’t do something. He takes it as a challenge to go ahead and do it, almost as though he wants to prove that he’s above the law, which I suppose he is in a way.
‘Did you forget what the boatman said about how cold the water is?’ I remind him. ‘And how deep?’
Liam crouches down and puts his fingers in the water. ‘Yeah, that’s cold,’ he admits. ‘But I still bet I could do it.’
‘I’m sure you could,’ I tell him, patting him on the arm. ‘But we didn’t bring towels, so maybe next time.’
He nods quite seriously, and I wonder if he’s joking, because I certainly was, but he doesn’t seem to realise that.
We walk halfway along the beach and then Liam stops. ‘I’m starving,’ he suddenly announces. ‘Let’s go back and eat.’
‘Can we keep going to the end?’ I ask. ‘I’m enjoying it.’
But Liam is insistent, so we turn back and as soon as we reach the blanket, I find out that he has other things on his mind besides the picnic. He pulls me down onto his lap and fishes a present out of his pocket. It’s a small gift-wrapped box.
‘Open it,’ he says, excitedly.
I do and discover a gold chain with a Celtic cross on it. ‘It’s beautiful,’ I say, touching it.
Liam takes it out of the box, and I lift my ponytail so he can put it around my neck. ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Where did you get it?’
He shrugs. ‘I got it a while ago. I saw it and I thought of you and, well, it seems fitting, with us being in Scotland.’
I kiss him. ‘Thank you.’
Liam’s always buying me jewellery – rings, a bracelet, a few necklaces. He has good taste and I feel spoiled beyond measure, as until I met him my jewellery box was mostly full of things from Accessorize.
‘Do you like it?’ he asks.
‘I love it,’ I say, turning around to kiss him.
He pulls me closer. I can feel him getting aroused, so I climb off his lap and stretch towards the picnic hamper, but Liam catches me around the waist. ‘Where are you going?’ he asks, teasingly.
He flips me over onto my back and lowers himself on top of me with a wicked grin.
‘What?’ I ask, my eyes widening. ‘Here?’
He shrugs, his lips just inches from mine. ‘It’s not like there’s anyone here to see.’ He kisses me, the grin stretching his mouth wide, and his hands start to rove up inside my sweater. The wind slices against my skin like a razor as Liam eases off my clothes.
Naked, we make love on the blanket as the wind whips sand against us and the seagulls scream above us. Liam seems to like the thrill of it, but I can’t help but shiver, my skin coated in goosebumps. I’m distracted; I can’t shake the memory of the person I thought I saw on the beach yesterday when I was looking for stones. What if I didn’t imagine it? What if they’re here right now, watching us? The sense of being spied on grows, averting my attention, making me turn my head and scour the horizon.
I feel self-conscious and I can’t relax, and when we’ve finished, I’m quick to pull on my clothes.
‘Was that OK?’ Liam asks, stroking my arm as he lies beside me, drowsy and smiling.
‘Great,’ I say, not wanting to upset him or let him know I’ve got the unnerving sense we’re being watched. I move to open the picnic hamper, taking out the sandwiches and handing both to Liam. ‘Not hungry?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘Not really.’
He unwraps his sandwich and takes a bite. ‘Hand us a beer?’ he says.
I lever off the cap and hand him a bottle and then do the same with my own. Liam knocks his against mine. ‘Happy anniversary,’ he says. ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ I say, the words whipping away on the wind.
I cast a glance over my shoulder towards the forest, a shiver running up my spine.
Chapter Nine
I dress for dinner, pulling on the slinky black dress that I know Liam likes. ‘Very Audrey Hepburn,’ he said, the time I wore it on one of our early dates. It was my birthday and he took me for an incredible meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. That was the first time he told me he loved me, and it was one of the best nights of my life. I remember how I felt that night – like I was floating on air – and genuinely, it was the first time I’d ever felt beautiful.
I smile sadly when I recall my mum telling me how happy she was for me when I called her later that night to tell her how the date had gone.
My mum loved Liam, could see how good he was to me and was happy that I’d found someone who so obviously adored me after my previous two dating disasters. She liked his old-fashioned manners, the fact he was a gentleman; and it didn’t hurt that he brought flowers when he met her for the first time. He went up even more in her esteem when he fixed her leaking kitchen tap and mended the garden fence.
‘It’s nice to have a man around here who’s good with his hands,’ she’d said to me with a naughty smile, admiring Liam through the kitchen window as he hammered nails into a post.
I notice that the dress hangs loose on me now; looks more like a sheath than the curve-clinger it was a few months ago; but it still works. I touch up my make-up, putting on blusher to mask my paleness, and lipstick too, which I haven’t done in a while. It feels strange to wear heels inside the cottage, but it looks weird to be so dressed up and not wear shoes, so I slip them on before heading carefully downstairs, clutching the banister as I go. I’m not used to wearing heels and I feel a little light-headed.
Liam’s sitting on the sofa lacing up his boots, but he pauses when he sees me, and his mouth falls open. ‘You look beautiful,’ he says, eyes widening.
‘He adores you,’ my mum had told me, noticing the way he was looking at me the first time I brought him home.
I walk over to him and he pulls me into his lap. He’s put on a clean blue shirt and his ha
ir still looks windswept from our walk earlier.
‘I thought maybe we could have a little bonfire on the beach after dinner,’ he says. ‘I was just going to get it ready.’
‘Oh, yes,’ I say eagerly. I’ve always loved a bonfire; the smell of woodsmoke and the crackling flames always remind me of being a kid and burning leaves with my grandad on his allotment. ‘I’ll make dinner now then,’ I add.
Liam heads outside and I go into the kitchen, already knowing exactly how I’m going to cook the salmon and calculating in my head when I should put the crumble that I made earlier into the oven.
By the time I’m sliding the salmon in its foil wrapper under the grill, Liam is back from setting up the bonfire. He washes his hands and opens the wine, pouring a glass for himself which he chinks against my glass of water. ‘To us,’ he says.
‘To us,’ I answer.
After dinner we head out to the beach where Liam has built the bonfire. He has dragged out two chairs to sit beside it, and brought out a blanket, which he drapes around my shoulders. I tilt my head back and look up at the sky. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many stars,’ I say.
‘That’s the big dipper,’ Liam points out.
‘Ursa Major,’ I say.
Liam looks at me, surprised that I know the actual Latin name for the constellation.
‘My grandad taught me,’ I tell him with a small shrug, glancing up at the sky. ‘It never sets below the horizon in the northern hemisphere. Slaves used it to navigate north, on their way to freedom.’
‘What other stars do you know?’ Liam asks. ‘What’s that one, over there?’ He points to a bright star at the edge of Ursa Major.
I shake my head. ‘I’ve forgotten. It’s been so long.’
A shooting star suddenly streaks across the blackness overhead and I let out a gasp as it dissolves into the dark. ‘A shooting star! Did you see it?’
He shakes his head. ‘Did you make a wish?’ he asks.
I close my eyes and make one.
‘What did you wish for?’ he asks.
The Stalker Page 5