Today, she treads the jutting lips not to ponder her work, but to reach the island’s sorry excuse for a pier at its northern point. Whoever first attempted to settle on this rock, whoever threw that pier together, didn’t seem to hang around long enough to add much else; the pier, its rotting wooden bothy across the thicket, and of course her cottage are about the only structures she’s found on the diminutive isle. There were a few other modest constructions, but she’s since stripped them for fuel. She has to take all she can get.
But the island’s enough for her. Its uninviting qualities were exactly what made it so inviting to her in the first place. For the first time in her life, she’s found somewhere she can be truly alone. Well, not quite the first time. Sometimes, late at night when she doesn’t want to sleep, when she can’t face the dreams of the car and the road and the flames, she wades through the mists of her mind. She sits in front of the crackling fireplace, trying to form a mental image of that room of stone from all those years ago, that chamber at the top of the clock tower. She sometimes smiles at the irony of having traded one stone chamber for another.
But that was a different life. This island is now her clock tower, and the only intrusion on her seclusion she has to worry about are her publisher’s courier and the private deliveries, both of which use the bothy by the pier as a drop-off point for her supplies and correspondence on set dates, aiding in her solitude.
The small wooden hut emerges in the distance. She stops to pour soapy water from a flask over her hands, rubs them into a lather, rinses them with un-soaped water, then presses on. You have to keep your hands clean in a place like this. She looks out at the surrounding islands as she marches through the undergrowth. Thin streaks of land smear the horizon, far enough away to look like mistakes on an oil painting, close enough to shoot a shudder up her spine at the thought of the eyes, those agonising knife-eyes just a short maritime leap away. She tears her gaze away to survey the skies for any sign of storm clouds. The weather looks promising, but here on Neo-Thorrach that can change in a meteorological instant. Still, today is courier day, not delivery day, and so all she can expect to have to carry back to the cottage is correspondence from Highacre House Publishing (maybe they’ve edited her new manuscript) and possibly more warnings from her accountant. Next week will require a few trips with her handcart to carry the delivery of supplies back from the pier. Oh, but she must remember the clock is ticking on the generator’s engine isolators and fuel valves, and she still needs to see about getting someone out to replace the filter housings of the water purifier, not to mention—
You don’t have the income for this anymore.
She pushes aside the words from her accountant’s last letter as she steps over a dried up rivulet and hastens her pace towards the rocky beach. Her boots crunch on the gravel and shale as she makes her way past the disintegrating pier and approaches the hut, its door swinging freely in the gathering gale.
She slips inside and, as usual, finds no change in temperature. Nevertheless, she values this brief moment of shelter from what is becoming a stinging wind, and usually takes a moment before making her way back to—
She spots the parcel.
Sitting next to an A4 board-backed envelope from her publisher is a long, thin package wrapped in red and green paper, adorned with images of mistletoe and snowmen. She looks at the postal mark on the envelope and, for one of the few times in her ten years on the island, realises it’s nearly Christmas.
She reaches for the scribbled note by the parcel, in which the courier explains he came via a neighbouring island where some resident children begged him to bring this Christmas present to the lady on Neo-Thorrach. Warmth begins to rise in her chest as she picks up the package, until it quickly sinks back down as she examines its shape and weight. She rips the mistletoe and snowmen from around the gift. She rises to her feet, staring at the witch’s broomstick in her hands.
The door creaks and clatters in the wind.
Tonight, the fire rages.
She resets the clasp in her hair, fixes an extra clip, then coaxes the logs in the grate with the iron poker. The Aga stove usually gives off enough heat to warm the room, the same room she almost exclusively sticks to, but a little extra is needed some nights. However, fuel is running low; they didn’t name the island after the Gaelic word for ‘infertile’ for nothing. She’s positively scraped the barren rock of all it can offer, burning its scraps of peat and flotsam, as well as the few sources of wood she’s located. Extra fuel has always been filled out in her deliveries, a ready supply of paraffin for the Tilley lamps and coal for the Aga regularly included amongst the chicken feed and petrol for the generator. However, it’s been an expensive business, and as the accountant likes to keep reminding her: You don’t have the income for this anymore.
She likes to think of herself as self-sufficient, but having canisters of petrol and bags of coal shipped out is hardly living off the land. She mostly needs the generator to run the purifier, but if she can make further use of the constant rain then she can probably manage to make the switch to sediment filtering and distillation of seawater, thereby doing away with the generator and its petrol requirements. But that still leaves the Aga fuel, and if she doesn’t invest in some more livestock soon then her diet of tinned and dried foods is probably going to give her scurvy or something. This place isn’t meant for living. Life isn’t meant to be a battle for fuel. She knows she should get on the grid, even some place in the countryside would do. But the knives, the eyes…always the eyes.
The flames in the grate renew, rising and twisting before her. Once, there had been another fire in another house in another world. The amnesia from the crash
not a crash it wasn’t a crash
had stripped the teenager not only of the incident itself, but of much to have come before. The memories of her life had returned slowly, drip fed during her fifteen years in care,
not normal not a normal hospital
the dread of the Wakefield residence emerging back into view with every passing year.
She’d shared none of the bad memories with her doctors, and the fact that nothing of the crash whatsoever had come back to her hadn’t worried them in the slightest. They may even have seemed relieved. She’d told them she was so pleased to finally remember her mother and father and brother and her life in Millbury Peak, but in reality had spent countless sleepless nights lying awake, clawing at the palms of her hands, agonising over the reawakening memories of her childhood. In truth, that disastrous night had remained utterly black, like the silhouette of a mountain against the backdrop of a starry sky.
black hands black dripping from my hands black
The bottomless void of that night persisted in its darkness in all the decades since, with the doctors telling her it may even be better that way. Better not to disturb something your psyche obviously wants left alone, they’d said. So she did just that. She left it alone.
The evening had brought with it the beginnings of a snowstorm that would last through the remainder of the week and right into New Year. Seems like she’d made it back to the cottage just in time. She looks out at the burgeoning storm. If it’s nearly Christmas, that means it’ll soon be her tenth anniversary on Neo-Thorrach. Fifteen years in hospital
too long too long for just a crash
and ten on this bleak rock. That’s twenty-five years away from her family. It still shocks her to think of them never having visited while she was in care, yet she also feels they did her a favour. She had no longer needed a clock tower to escape from the tyrant that was Thomas Wakefield, instead having had free reign in her very own section of the hospital
isolated segregated studying you they’re studying you
She could read in her room, explore the grounds
supervised
or just pace the long, white corridors,
they’re empty just me whole section to myself why
one of her favourite pastimes. And when she’d started writi
ng again, well, then she’d churned out her first novel, posted copies of the manuscript to literary agents, and eventually found representation, leading to her publication. Would any of that have happened in that house with that family? She suspected not.
Noah will be in his thirties by now
the spade the spade something about the spade
probably have his own family, maybe moved away and will no doubt visit Mother and Father at every opportunity. Always the perfect son.
Her initial years in care were hazy
Horror Highway Horror Highway Horror Highway
but once she’d began recovering, her years in the
mad house
hospital had been the happiest years of
pedal
her
spade
life.
blood
Pain. Searing, blinding pain. She closes her eyes and rubs the sides of her head, trying to visualise those pure, pristine corridors. Damn headaches.
She prods the fire, causing a burst of heat, then settles down at her writing desk to read the letter from her publisher. Usually, these A4 envelopes contain revised versions of her manuscripts, amended and edited for her review with handwritten notes in the margins. Her Adler typewriter produces faint type no matter how fresh the ribbon, and it’s always a joy to see her manuscript professionally reproduced by her editor, clear and crisp. What this envelope contains, however, causes her to freeze in shock.
They’d returned her manuscript, faded and unedited. The accompanying letter reads:
Dear Ms Wakefield,
Thank you for the submission of your latest novel, Love in High Places. Following our latest correspondence, I trust you understand that sales of your recent efforts have been dwindling. Although you have one final book in your current contract with Highacre House Publishing, I hope you’ll appreciate that due to all costs associated with production, marketing, and distribution of your novel, we have to ensure the work you provide is of a high enough calibre.
If I may be so blunt, Ms Wakefield, this submission is not on par with your usual output. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: I strongly suggest you come to London so we can properly discuss your future with this publishing house, and so our editors can advise you and set you off on the right track to producing a quality product. They can help you conceptualise new instalments in your Adelaide Addington series that will live up to your previous efforts and shift units.
I look forward to hearing back from you, hopefully with a proposed date for you to come to our offices so we can all work together on this. Failing that, please send a revised version of your manuscript, or a new submission.
Have a very merry Christmas.
Damian Abbott
Highacre House Publishing
She lowers the letter and stares at the typewriter. If only he knew how reluctant the words of this manuscript had been to materialise on the page. It was no longer a case of lowering her fingers to the keys and letting the stories spill out. No, something had changed. And while the rust in her creativity had taken hold, the generator had started playing up, the purifier had been breaking down, the latch on that damned front door needed fixed once and for all, and her bank balance, for the first time, stopped resembling the available funds of one who must bear the costs of living alone on an uninhabited island.
Living on an island: it sounds fancier than it is. She certainly doesn’t own it or anything. Being the sole inhabitant of a tiny, desolate islet in the Outer Hebrides boils down to a lot of learning and a lot of work. Above all, she’s found it comes down mostly to fuel. But she doesn’t want to think about the fuel situation right now.
She’d poured a substantial amount of her savings from the three novels, published while still in hospital, into structural repairs of the two-hundred-year-old cottage, meaning the building now stands mixed with brand-new beams running every which way over the ancient stone and across the ceilings. Much had needed to be taken into consideration for the outfitting of the run-down little abode into a practical living space, not to mention some serious renovation work on the dilapidated outhouse at the back. Before long, the cottage was filled with everything she needed for this new life of reclusion. She was a citizen of ‘Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’ of the Outer Hebrides island chain, so her accountant told her. But all she really cared about was the typewriter sitting on the desk by the window at which she planned to live out her days in solitary bliss.
It never occurred to her that people might stop reading her books.
So now she doesn’t know what to do. Writing is the sole method by which she can live on this island undisturbed and alone. She can’t face the real world, she can’t face anything but this rock. She thinks of her mother and that sweet, encouraging smile of hers, and for the first time in years craves the squeeze of her hand. Exhaustion from the uncertainty and worry sweeps over her. She could do with a good sleep tonight. No dreams of fire and brimstone. But she knows there will be.
Every night the fire rages.
The front door, which opens straight into the lounge-cum-kitchen, blasts open as the broken latch clatters to the stone floor. Within seconds snow is thrashing around the room. She jumps to her feet and grabs some rope from a crate by the window, then feeds it through the broken hatch’s fixtures on the door and its frame. She pulls the rope tight so as to secure it shut, then stands with her back against the door, fists clenched, nails digging into the palms of her hands as her precious heat slips out of the house. She clamps her eyes shut. What’s she going to do? It’s writing or nothing at all, that’s the simple truth. Writing or nothing. If she can’t write, then she can’t—
She opens her eyes. Her gaze rises to the ceiling. A beam runs its length.
Writing or nothing.
She slowly unties the rope from around the latch. The door swings open, slamming violently against the wall. The blizzard explodes inside, snow spiralling around the woman’s delicate figure. She wraps the rope into a coil and cradles it in her arms, her eyes alternating between the hemp against her bosom and the beam above.
Writing or nothing.
She will live on the island for a further three years, during which time she’ll attempt, and fail, to salvage the rejected manuscript, as well as producing another, more dead end than the last.
Tonight, the seed has been planted. The beam is strong, solid. It would hold. Maybe death – the ultimate solitude – has been calling to her since the first day she walked along those ragged cliff edges. She doesn’t need a rope or a beam to end herself, this she knows. If she really needs out, the cliffs could do the rope’s job with far less effort. But a body torn apart on rough, razor rocks at the foot of a cliff would be a messy thing. No, the rope could provide a clean snap. Tidy and contained. Pure, simple, everything in its place.
No disorder. No disaster.
And once she’s made up her mind, once the rope is knotted and noosed and ready to go, her courier will leave a letter for her in the little wooden hut by the pier, a letter from a detective in a town called Millbury Peak. If anything or anyone could draw her back to the real world, it would be Sylvia Wakefield. Or, more specifically, the death of Sylvia Wakefield, and a promise made a lifetime ago.
But now the woman, slender and unassuming, will stand in the doorway of a centuries-old cottage, the blizzard of a lonely white Christmas blasting around her. Her eyes are now locked on the beam above, her hand gently stroking the noose in her arms. The rope will stay with her until her return to Millbury Peak, where in a secret cellar she will defeat it. The rope will break under a meagre flame, as another flame is reborn inside her. And with the snap of hemp will come the breaking of the woman she once was, and the emergence of something else begging for release, and release it shall have.
Tonight, the fire rages.
Every night the fire rages.
23
Winter came. The nights drew further into the day. The skies over Millbury Peak had continued
to pour as gales persisted in blowing the rainfall to extreme angles. But today, the day of the auction, the wind and rain subsided.
A cane clicked up the pavement towards the town hall. The woman approached the pillared building, its stone columns quite out of place in the quaint country town. There was a lot out of place in this town.
Her dark glasses pointed in the direction of the sweeping cane in her gloved hand. She stopped at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance.
‘Miss Wakefield, what…’ The voice trailed off as its owner gawked at the tinted lenses and cane. ‘What happened to you, Miss Wakefield?’
Renata stared, eyes obscured. ‘Early onset glaucoma, Sandie. Doctors told me to wear these until my treatment. Don’t worry about little old me. I can still see a bit.’ She placed a weak hand on the girl’s arm, under which a bulky Dostoevsky screamed for attention. ‘And I told you, it’s Renata.’
She watched pity fall across Sandie’s face, the kind of pity one would usually reserve for a lame animal. The girl was vulnerable, sensitive, Renata knew this. It was still easy to see, however, with or without sight, the ivory tower from which Sandie looked down upon the world; unreachable, protected. Lifelong privilege had fooled her into a false sense of invulnerability, and the sight of a lesser mortal only strengthened this sense of superiority. Renata suspected that to this girl, those less fortunate were nothing more than the exhibits of a Victorian freak show, there to either make her feel better about herself, or be used to show off her own brand of self-gratifying compassion. Yet from behind her father’s old cataract glasses, Renata discerned innocent fragility beneath Sandie’s superficiality. There was a little girl under the make-up, wanting nothing more than to please her father. Renata knew because she’d once been the same little girl.
For Rye Page 19