A Very Distant Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  There were missed travel connections and hotel rooms they couldn’t really afford. Once or twice they took other people’s appointments, and on and on.

  As usual, the whole of Mure came together to help them. Dishes appeared on their steps every day. Laundry just disappeared and turned up again. (Angus hadn’t locked his front door in his life.)

  Mrs Collins at the school took on the bulk of Lorna’s paperwork. The farm boys came up and hung around, desperately looking for something to do to help Angus, their old boss.

  But no one could help Lorna where it truly mattered: inside.

  After three weeks, she cracked. This couldn’t go on. She was in tears half the time. Her brother Iain couldn’t get back from the rigs for another two months. She couldn’t keep on doing this alone, not if she was going to return to school.

  She went back to the doctor, by herself.

  She had thought about Saif quite a lot. She tried to tell herself that she was just wondering how he was getting on. But every time some of the endless paperwork came from the hospital, she would see his name. She liked seeing his name.

  But that was only brief seconds here and there. She’d been too busy on the whole, too worried to think about anything. She hadn’t had a chance to grab a coffee or a glass of wine with Jeannie to hear the gossip. Even if they all needed a catch-up, a big one.

  She’d moved back into the farmhouse. Of course she had. What else could she do? Every evening, she’d help Dad up to bed. (He shouldn’t be taking whisky with his painkillers, but as he pointed out, he was over seventy, which had to count for something, didn’t it?) Then she couldn’t sleep. The old house creaked because of the wooden slats in the thick stone walls. The animals outside in the pens shifted and bellowed. Angus of course woke at 5 a.m. – the habit of a lifetime. She woke then too, but she was lucky to get to sleep before two or three, and sometimes not at all.

  She looked, she knew, completely awful. Her hair needed a trim. Normally she would find time to get it done in Oban. This was no disrespect to Phyllis Weir, the local hairdresser. Phyllis travelled about doing the old ladies’ shampoos and sets, and was great for a gossip and a cup of tea. But she didn’t understand if you asked her for anything honeyed or naturalesque, or if you mentioned Jennifer Aniston.

  Lorna had huge bags under her eyes and could do almost nothing without bursting into tears. Despite Mrs Collins’ help, the paperwork for the new term was still a lot of work. It was the summer term too, which meant it was full of school trips and outings and shows. She hadn’t touched a single bit of the paperwork, none of it. When she tried to look at it, the words swam in front of her eyes.

  She remembered she had to pick up special cream for her father where he’d been burned by the radiotherapy, and that they’d run out of milk. She needed to have a big meeting with Angus’s farm manager. There were bills piling up in the letter box.

  She couldn’t cope, however much help she had. She just couldn’t. She was completely crushed. And if that has ever happened to you, you’ll know how difficult it is to do more than just the tiniest basics.

  Chapter 18

  ‘Next?’ said Saif dully, glancing briefly at the computer. He could work the system now and could read notes and book appointments online. He was a prescription pad in motion. People had tried to be cheery and welcoming – well, most of them – but he had absolutely no interest in them at all. He only wanted to have a daily look through the lists of the charities: Médecins Sans Frontières, the Red Crescent, Save the Children. Anywhere that posted lists; anywhere at all. He was just waiting and waiting.

  As for the town, people were friendly but didn’t intrude. That was the islanders’ way. It wasn’t exactly as if all talk stopped whenever he walked into a shop or the post office… well, sometimes it did. But social life here seemed to revolve around the pub or the church, neither of which applied to him really. And his thoughts weren’t with the people he looked after. Although he treated them as thoroughly and carefully as he could. They could sense, too, that he didn’t feel he belonged; that he didn’t truly want to. It was not a problem he thought he could solve: loneliness.

  He had started taking long walks. At first, being cold had made him miserable. Reminding him of so many long days and nights, sleeping whenever he could. Now, when it was clear, he liked the fresh pink mornings, the vast sky. The stars were further away here. But you could still see them; not like in the cities, where there was too much light.

  And the beaches; he had never seen such beaches. They went on, cool, pale pink and white sand, for miles and miles, empty. Nobody there. A spot at the end of the world with nobody there. Why? he found himself thinking. Why wasn’t everyone here? Why couldn’t they bring them all home to this safe, quiet, stable place? Not just the useful ones, like him?

  But he couldn’t complain. As soon as they found out he was actually a normal doctor, and that he wanted to be left alone, they’d done just that. And they were pleased that he would happily prescribe antibiotics. With his other worries, Saif was a little bit beyond worrying about the morality of prescribing too many antibiotics. He couldn’t cook, though. That was a problem. He knew Mrs Laird would happily have cooked for him every day. But he found her shepherd’s pie and stews very tasteless, and he wasn’t sure that she always remembered he didn’t eat pork. But he had to eat something.

  He blinked, woken from his thoughts.

  ‘Um, hello?’

  He didn’t recognise the young woman sitting in front of him.

  ‘Hello again,’ she said, and he smiled slightly shyly. Obviously he knew he stood out, but also, everyone on the island knew everyone else on the island, so someone knowing who he was didn’t really count. It had been like that in Damascus once; the feeling was familiar somehow. It was nice, he supposed. To feel you belonged.

  ‘How can I help?’

  ‘Um,’ she said. He glanced at the computer. Lorna. Lorna MacLeod. One of the easier names to say. He’d already had big problems with Eilidh, Euan, Teurlach and Mhairi.

  ‘Well. I’ve been having trouble sleeping.’

  Saif looked at her. He hadn’t slept more than three hours per night for over half a year. His phone was always blinking at him, always glowing, even when he couldn’t get a signal.

  ‘Uh huh,’ he said.

  ‘I’m under a lot of pressure with my father.’

  It sounded like ‘faither’, the way she said it. He was beginning to understand the rhythms of the sing-songy local voice. He noticed how its words ran on and had an unusual lilt. But the first time he heard Gaelic spoken in the waiting room, he’d had to take a step back before he realised it was a different language and not his English failing him. He didn’t know it, but he’d started to take on some of the lilt himself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘And my job and the farm and… I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.’

  They looked at each other. Lorna was hopeful that he would take it from here in his role as doctor. Saif was puzzled as to what on earth she wanted.

  ‘Um, yes?’ he said.

  ‘So I wondered if you could help.’

  ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘I know, but I wondered if you could maybe… help me sleep or something.’

  ‘But I help you if there is something wrong with you.’

  Lorna felt tears pricking her eyelids.

  ‘Well, obviously, there is something wrong with me.’

  Saif remembered her now. He leaned forward.

  ‘I understand. Your father is sick, yes?’

  Lorna nodded. ‘He’s in treatment. And I have to do everything. And I feel like I can’t cope.’

  Saif blinked. Lorna couldn’t help looking at his long eyelashes. Then she felt guilty for staring, but he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking up. ‘You have to cope.’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Lorna, confused.

  ‘You have a difficult thing to do.’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘Many people have difficult things to do.’

  There was a pause as Lorna tried to work out what he was saying.

  ‘You mean… you won’t give me anything to help me sleep?’

  ‘What time do you go to bed?’

  ‘Eleven? Normal time. But I just lie there thinking. It just goes round and round in my head.’

  ‘Go to bed at nine,’ said Saif. Lorna stared at him, horrified.

  ‘That’s your advice? But if I can’t sleep at eleven, how will I possibly be able to sleep at nine?’

  Saif shrugged.

  ‘A good routine. Perhaps some more exercise?’

  Lorna went bright pink.

  ‘I’m IN THE CAR ALL DAY DRIVING MY FATHER TO THE HOSPITAL,’ she shouted.

  Outside, the waiting room fell silent.

  ‘No,’ said Saif. ‘I am sorry. It would be wrong. Pills are not right for you.’

  There was another pause. Lorna felt so angry that her heart pounded in her chest. She wanted very badly to shout at him again.

  He leant forward.

  ‘You are unhappy,’ he said, in what was meant to be a friendly tone, but came out clipped as he searched for precisely the right words to say. ‘Because sad things are happening in your life. How do drugs help with that? You are sad. Feel the sadness. If you came in here and said “everything in my life is perfect and wonderful, yet every day is terrible” – well then, yes, we have a problem. But you are worried because of your father. That is right for you to be. You are sad because there is work to be done to help him. That is right for you to be also. Then, when he is better, your sadness will pass. This is normal life, you understand?’

  ‘I. Just. Need. Something. To. Help. Me. Sleep.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No. Listen to me on this. You are normal. If you take pills to help you sleep, then you will always need pills to help you sleep, even though it is normal. Even though it is right to feel as you feel. Sad is not an illness.’

  Lorna blinked.

  ‘How do you know?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I will tell you. I know.’

  ‘So you won’t give me anything?’ She looked like she was going to cry.

  Saif tapped a few more buttons on his computer and looked at her father’s results from the hospital.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see what is happening with your father, and how he is responding to treatment.’

  He looked straight at her.

  ‘I do not think you should give up hope. I have hope to give you.’

  She stood up, utterly enraged. He wanted to say sorry, but he didn’t know how.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly, which Saif had learned, quite correctly, was what British people said when they wanted to get away from you.

  He nodded, and watched her as she left.

  Chapter 19

  It took several more weeks – and several nights spent lying awake cursing Saif’s name – before Lorna’s insomnia finally started to lift. During those weeks she nearly fell asleep while driving and cried at everything. She cried over a roadkill rabbit and a dead seagull, even though she felt about seagulls the way most people who don’t live on islands feel about rats. She was clumsy, behind in her paperwork and felt sick and hopeless half the time. If only that useless doctor could have helped her!

  Eventually, as the nights continued to grow shorter and shorter, she started to sleep again. As the wind coming in from the North Atlantic turned breezy and welcome, rather than cold and cutting, she finally found that going to bed as early as she could helped. In fact, she went to bed as soon as she’d given her father his last dose of medication (which she had thought about stealing, but then, with a sigh, had decided not to).

  It was annoying to think that the stupid doctor had been right – and she was annoyed at herself. She’d gone in to see him, aiming to be so friendly, and he had been blunt and disapproving, just like a real doctor. It had been a difficult thing to ask for, and a very solid refusal.

  But somehow she hadn’t defied him, or nipped in to Dr MacAllister (a famously soft touch) for a second opinion. She’d stuck to it.

  And it was true about her dad. The tumour did appear to be shrinking. It was horrible and the treatment seemed to be taking for ever, but it was doing something.

  She was going to bed nice and early. Yes, all right, so that part had been helpful. That was very annoying. But it meant that when she got into bed she knew that she had three full hours to fall asleep. The light still beamed through the curtains. And that had a lulling effect on her, gradually calming the urge to toss and turn on the pillows. But it also meant, she thought crossly, that she had not a second to herself all evening. She had to sort out dinner, since if it were up to her father, he’d just fry up anything and serve it with beans.

  Of course she woke up incredibly early, but oddly she didn’t mind that so much. She used the time to walk Milou – and Lowith, one of her father’s old working dogs. As a farming man he was not keen on keeping pets, but he never got rid of a dog that was too old to work. Instead he let them slink around the barn and sleep beside the old Aga in the kitchen if it was chilly at night. Lorna would accuse him of being a softie, and he’d grunt crossly and pet the old dog gently with his hand.

  A bit more exercise was helping to clear her head and tire her out a bit. It was another thing that that stupid doctor had been right about.

  This morning, she crammed a beret onto her unruly curls – it wasn’t yet that warm early in the morning. She pulled on a huge old jacket – so old that nobody could remember who it had first belonged to. Then she headed into the fresh morning, feeling like the only person awake in the world.

  It was wonderfully clear and bright out there. The sun was showing the promise of warmth. It lit the sky from end to end in a pale blue that blended into the wide white of the huge, seemingly endless beach below the farm. Small mounds of seaweed waved a little, but most of the beach was completely flawless, as if it had been designed for a film set. She could see another dog miles away, hopping about its owner. Apart from that they were completely alone at this time in the morning, even in a place where people rose early.

  ‘Milou! Lowith!’ she called, as she did every morning, in a fruitless attempt to stop them running into the surf. There they splashed as happily as their creaky old bones would let them. Then they staggered back guiltily, dripping water everywhere, even as she told them they wouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen any more.

  She breathed in the clear morning air. It felt sweet and fresh on her tongue. She shouted for the dogs, who of course ignored her. So she left them to it and simply strolled briskly, feeling the cool breeze on her face. She was delighted, as she always was, by the bright turquoise of the water. It was as clean, she thought, as any you’d find anywhere in the world.

  She walked quite a way. She was charmed by the waves and by the clear shifting shades of green. She had an odd feeling that she didn’t recognise at first. Then gradually she realised that the salty spray felt good and fresh on her skin. And eventually she became aware that what she was feeling was a sense of well-being, of calm.

  She was feeling calm. She was sleeping again. She was gradually pulling it back together. Well, there was a long way to go. But she was definitely feeling better.

  It was still pretty cold, but the sun was warming her a little and she risked slipping off her shoes and socks. The pale sand felt good beneath her toes. She walked towards the waves. The dogs suddenly turned to prance towards her, expecting her to join in and play with them.