A Very Distant Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘For me,’ he said. ‘For me it is not okay. I am sorry. So sorry.’ He backed away even further.

  ‘But… what’s…’ Lorna felt herself horribly shamed; her throat tightened. ‘What’s wrong… what’s wrong with me?’ she found herself stuttering.

  He stepped towards her, his eyes burning fiercely.

  ‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with you,’ he said in an angry voice. ‘You are… you are very beautiful. You are very lovely. But…’ He threw his hands up in despair. ‘I am not free. That is all. I am not a free man.’

  And he turned, furiously, and stalked away. He didn’t look back, or right or left. And his footsteps faded on the cobbles of the windy harbour and he was gone.

  Chapter 29

  With that sixth sense friends so often have, Flora found her sitting beneath the tree, trying not to cry.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed. ‘Quick. Roddy McClafferty’s cab’s here, but he’s passed out in the bogs. We’ll nick it and send it back for him, but you’ll have to be quick before anyone else realises.’

  This struck Lorna as a good idea, and they dashed out to Wullie’s ancient estate car. It served as a taxi on busy nights, although it smelled of all of his nine dogs at once and still had his ladder in it.

  Flora had Lorna’s handbag too. Lorna took it weakly.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I saw him stalking off. Snooty, grumpy old bastard,’ said Flora. ‘I never liked him.’

  ‘Half an hour ago you told me to get off with him!’

  ‘Yes, well, I was younger then.’

  Lorna dissolved in tears.

  ‘What’s the matter? Was it a religious thing? Or do you have like three tits and you’ve just never mentioned it?’

  The jokes weren’t helping. Lorna carried on sobbing.

  ‘No. No. There’s… there’s someone else. I think he’s married or something.’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing a ring.’

  ‘Maybe… maybe he lost it. Or sold it.’

  They thought about that.

  ‘Well, why’s he been flirting with you then?’ said Flora.

  ‘I don’t think he has,’ said Lorna. ‘I think… I mean, he doesn’t know anyone here. I’m his only friend. I think maybe I misread things…’

  Flora gave her a long look in the light of the harbour street lamps.

  ‘That’s odd, because he looked to me like a devoted puppy dog.’

  Lorna started to cry again.

  ‘Oh God, now I’ve messed everything up.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Flora. ‘Because nobody else has ever had a drunken snog they’ve regretted later. Nobody ever in the history of the world.’ She patted her gently on the shoulder.

  ‘He WALKED OFF,’ said Lorna. ‘He went to kiss me and then… he just walked off! Left me high and dry! I felt like total shit.’

  ‘That’s why I never liked him.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Lorna covered her face with her hands. ‘What am I going to do next time I need a smear test? I’m going to die of cancer and it will all be his fault.’

  ‘The good thing about you is the way you don’t build things up too much in your head,’ said Flora.

  She gave Lorna a huge hug.

  ‘Listen. It’s fine. It’ll be okay. Just ignore it. That’s what a bloke would do. Pretend it never happened. Ever. He’ll do his two years here, then he’ll be gone.’

  ‘So I just have to live on a tiny island totally avoiding somebody for two whole years?’

  ‘You can do anything you need to.’

  ‘At least nobody saw us,’ said Lorna. ‘At least there’s that.’

  ‘Did you kiss that doctor?’ came Wullie’s voice from the front of the car. ‘Well, you want to be careful, young lady. People will talk.’

  Lorna buried her face in her hands again. Flora rolled her eyes.

  Chapter 30

  ‘Okay, I’m ready,’ said Lorna in a small voice.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Flora.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re absolutely ready?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Ready to look at your phone?’

  ‘I am ready to look at my phone. Pass it over.’

  Sure enough, there was a long list of excited questions from people who’d obviously seen them on the dance floor. Plus a tagged picture, which luckily was just of the dance floor. But seriously: already? They were still in Wullie’s taxi.

  As Lorna was deleting them, the phone rang suddenly, startling them both.

  ‘He is SO sorry,’ said Flora. ‘But don’t go over there.’

  ‘It’s not a booty call,’ said Lorna. ‘He wouldn’t send me a booty call.’

  ‘I’m just saying. Don’t go over there.’

  ‘I’m not —’ Lorna noticed the caller’s name. ‘Mrs Laird? Hello. Hello? Is everything all right?… WHAT?’

  Wullie, who had been going to drop Flora off first, made an immediate U-turn.

  Chapter 31

  Lorna charged into the little cottage, her dress still dancing out behind her.

  ‘Where is he?’

  He wasn’t responding or moving. Mrs Laird had gone in to check on him at ten, when he was asleep. And at eleven, when he’d seemed a little paler but fine. At midnight she’d got frightened. She’d tried to wake him but couldn’t.

  His skin was a ghastly grey under the overhead light. Flora was already on her phone.

  ‘Dr MacAllister is on call tonight, and he’s on the other side of the island. Do you think we need the air ambulance?’

  Lorna just stared at her.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course.’

  Flora hung up and dialled 999, and blurted out what was going on.

  Meanwhile, Lorna tried to make her father comfortable. He was breathing, just, but it was rattling in and out. She put him in the recovery position, but his skin was clammy. His heartbeat, to her shaking, sweaty fingers, seemed to skitter and jump. She picked up her own phone. With slippery hands, after a couple of failed attempts, she managed to call the very last number she felt like dialling.

  Saif wasn’t asleep.

  In fact, he was crying. For the first time in his adult life.

  The girl; the garden; the island. One gentle hand, one near kiss…

  It was as if something had burst inside him. A wall had crumbled, and just as he had feared, once he had started, he didn’t know if he could stop. Thank God Mrs Laird wasn’t there. He stared at the four walls and just let the tears fall. He let them flow through him like blood pouring from a wound, as if they would never end.

  It took him a while to steel himself to pick up the phone. When he saw who it was, he drew his hand back.

  ‘Oh God!’ screamed Lorna. ‘He won’t pick up. You’ll have to call him.’

  It was a panic out of her worst nightmares, as Flora fiddled with the phone and finally got through to him.

  When he heard what was happening, Saif swore with startling force and sprinted out of the door, frantically wiping his face with the back of his hand.

  Chapter 32

  The air ambulance took forever to arrive. The sound of its blades could be heard from a great distance. It was the longest wait of Lorna’s life, though she couldn’t have said afterwards precisely how long it took. Every moment felt like an hour.

  She and Saif hadn’t spoken to one another since he’d knocked and slipped in through the door with his large leather bag. He’d immediately knelt down next to her father. He’d peppered Mrs Laird with questions and had set up an IV drip. He worked briskly and calmly, but nothing he did seemed to affect Angus’s irregular breathing and his ghastly grey skin.

  None the less, the air ambulance crew praised him. Then they turned to Lorna and gestured her into the helicopter.

  ‘I will come,’ said Saif straight away.

  ‘Sorry, mate, no room,’ said the medic. ‘Only space for one.’

  Saif nodded. Then he looked directly at Lorna, who blushed instincti
vely. She wanted to look away, but forced herself not to.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he said fiercely as she finally steeled herself to meet his gaze. ‘I should have picked up the phone. I am… About everything. I am.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You weren’t on call. It wasn’t your fault.’

  He raised his hands and said something over the noise of the helicopter blades whipping round. But she didn’t catch what it was as the chopper lifted into the sky, which was already growing light, and set out over the stormy sea.

  Chapter 33

  It was like the jumble of a disturbed dream: a night of shouting, of running, and confusion, and consent forms. And the work was done by incredibly clever young people who looked about the age of the schoolchildren she was sending off to secondary school on the mainland.

  There were IVs, injections, lines. Her brother Iain burst through off his flight, his face drawn. Then he half smiled and told her she smelled of booze. And he punched her arm and they hugged for a long time.

  But then they had a long, long wait as her father was wheeled into surgery. They held hands. Lorna ignored her phone, which pinged and lit up every second. She didn’t want to read whatever people had to say. She couldn’t bear the idea that it might make it a reality.

  It was 5 a.m. when they saw a young, tired figure coming towards them from the end of a long corridor filled with grey light. It was the surgeon. Iain frowned. They’d been told the operation would take far longer.

  Lorna froze, watching her taking step after step towards them, a walk she must be dreading. She held her breath. She and Iain clutched each other tightly, unable to look at one another.

  The doctor saw them, and took a deep breath of her own.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said as she approached, her face drawn with tiredness. ‘We tried. But as soon as we opened him up… The tumour had metastasised… wrapped around the central cortex. I really am sorry. There was absolutely nothing to be done.’

  She blinked.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  Even though there was no one else in the waiting area they were in, they followed her blindly into a bland little room with pictures of flowers on the walls and cushions on the chairs.

  ‘I’m afraid he couldn’t take the anaesthetic. Opening him up… It was very much a last-ditch attempt at what we were trying to do.’

  Lorna could hear the words, but she didn’t understand what they meant.

  The doctor was shaking her head.

  ‘We couldn’t save him.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’ said Lorna.

  Iain reached out and put an arm around her. ‘He’s dead, Loz,’ he said gently. ‘Dad’s dead.’

  ‘But he had the operation,’ said Lorna, still confused. They were in the hospital, after all.

  ‘Lorna,’ said Iain.

  And then she understood.

  Chapter 34

  Lorna ran blindly out of the hospital, Iain calling her name. She was lucky there was no one about at that time of day. She could barely see through her tears as she charged across roads and along the jetty and caught the very first ferry of the morning.

  There was nobody else on board that early. She paced up and down the deck as the waves rose and fell behind her. She was completely unable to think, to deal with the fact that her father was gone.

  She finally answered the constant ringing of her phone.

  ‘Where are you?’ said Iain.

  ‘I’m heading back.’

  ‘Why?’ he said. ‘There’s stuff to do here, Lorna.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘Well, they’ll need to take him away, all that kind of thing, paperwork. If you want to see him…’

  She let out a terrified sob.

  ‘Already?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ she said. ‘I saw Mum. It didn’t help at all. I want to remember him… the way I loved him.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Okay,’ said Iain. ‘Well. You do what you want to do.’

  Lorna shook her head. She didn’t even know where she was going.

  ‘I’ll wait for you at home,’ she said.

  She stared out at the bright horizon, at this ridiculous dawning of a day that didn’t have her father in it. Her head hurt, and she was thirsty. Just as she thought this, the kind captain with the thick beard was at her elbow. He held out a huge enamel mug of tea.

  ‘You looked like you needed this,’ he said gruffly, then turned away. Lorna stared after him. She took a sip and was very grateful.

  ‘At Dad’s?’ said Iain.

  ‘Of course. I’ve been living there.’

  There was a long pause then.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Iain. ‘You’ve done this all by yourself. I didn’t realise how serious it was. It’s been so hard to get away. I’m sorry, Lorna.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  His voice went high and strange. ‘I wish I’d had the chance… I wish I’d been able to say goodbye.’

  ‘He’d have told you to sod off,’ said Lorna, smiling through her tears. ‘You know he would. Honestly, Iain. He was on the mend. He was quite happy.’

  ‘Just unlucky, that was all.’

  There was silence as the ferry droned on across the waves, the sunlight bouncing off them.

  ‘You stay at Dad’s,’ said Iain finally. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  Chapter 35

  As she got off the boat, the captain told her to look after herself. Then she found she simply couldn’t go back to the farmhouse. Her feet wouldn’t let her do it. Not when there would be bowls and plates in the dishwasher, and his clothes in the laundry. His old coat would be hanging on the back of the door, and the fire probably still burning low in the grate.

  Instead, she turned back towards the shore. Her tired, so tired, feet were taking her that way. On the beach, she took off her shoes and socks, and let the cold sand squish between her toes.

  She wandered up to the headland, then sat down, hugging her knees. She was freezing, but she didn’t care. She had so much to do, so much to arrange. There was so much life going on around her. Just a little longer, she thought, and then I will get up. And I know, the one thing I know is that everyone here on Mure, my home, everyone will help me get through this.

  They would all pull together – Iain and Mrs Laird and Flora and Jeannie and Dr MacAllister and the teachers and the children. Everyone helped each other when you lived somewhere like this, and whatever else had happened, it would be a comfort, a definite comfort. She would feel better. One day.