by Jenny Colgan
She dismounted last, the tourists stumbling around, and walked through the little tin shed they called an airport.
The bus was filled with excited early holidaymakers, joyful that it wasn’t raining, equipped with bicycles and walking canes and guidebooks. The sun was glinting through, even though the morning haar – the sea mist – hadn’t yet lifted, and as they approached the little town, it made the place look as though it was rising out of a cloud of smoke, like a mystery, or a magic trick. The deep green hills sloped down to the bright white sand you found in this part of the world; the long beaches seemed to stretch on for ever.
It was easy to see why the island had been so tempting to the Viking hordes who had claimed it and named it, and whose blood ran in its citizens’ veins even now. No Westminster politician ever visited Mure. Very few Edinburgh ones did. It was a little spot unto itself, up at the very northern tip of the known world.
As they drew into the harbour, the fog started to lift, revealing the cheerfully painted buildings that lined the port and formed the main street. Closer to, Flora noted that they looked a little dilapidated, paint peeling from the fierce northern gales. One shop – she searched her memory and remembered it finally as a little chemist’s – had closed down and sat, empty and sad.
Stepping off the bus, she felt nervous. What would people make of her? Because she knew she hadn’t behaved well after the funeral. Not well at all.
It wasn’t for long, she told herself. She was only here for a week. Soon she would be back in the city, enjoying the summer, sitting on the South Bank among the hordes, having bad dates, drinking overpriced cocktails, taking the night tube. Being young and in London. Surely it was the best place in the world.
Of course the very first person she’d see was Mrs Kennedy, her old dancing teacher, who’d already been ancient when Flora was a girl but whose eyes were still a piercing blue.
‘Flora MacKenzie!’ she stated, pointing her walking stick at her. ‘Well, in all my days.’
I am a big serious London paralegal, Flora told herself. I am perfectly busy and professional and normal and absolutely a hundred per cent not fourteen.
‘Hello, Mrs Kennedy,’ she sing-songed automatically. Flora had sat next to big lawyers in court; taken part in serious cases with very seriously bad people. She wasn’t scared of them. But Mrs Kennedy was a holy terror. Flora hadn’t forgotten a single step even now, although she could only be prevailed upon to perform at parties when people had had too many drinks to appreciate it, and she’d rather lost the finesse.
‘So are dhu back, is it?’
‘I’m… I’m just working,’ said Flora, knowing that this piece of information would be round the entire island in less time than it would take her to walk to the farmhouse.
‘Good,’ said Mrs Kennedy. ‘Glad to hear it. They need looking after.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Flora. ‘I mean, I’m actually working. Like, I have a job. In London. It’s a Big Six firm.’
Inwardly, she cursed. Who on earth did she think she was trying to impress here?
Mrs Kennedy sniffed.
‘Oh, would that be right, would it? Well, very fancy and nice for some, I’m sure.’
And she swept off down towards the little pier as fast as her arthritic legs would carry her.
Oh Lord, thought Flora. She’d known, after the funeral, that her name wasn’t exactly respected on Mure, but she hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. She felt a sudden flash of homesickness for her horrible little London room and the comforting rumble of the tube, the carriages full of nobody she knew.
The fishermen glanced up as she passed. A reticent bunch on the whole, they nodded at her and she nodded back, feeling conscious of how loud her small wheelie suitcase sounded on the cobblestones. She felt someone come silently to a doorway behind her, but when she turned her head, they’d gone. She sighed.
Just past the western end of the high street, the road parted and one fork headed up towards the hills. Most of the buildings were concentrated at the eastern end of the port; here, the pathways led to farming country.
The sun was lying bright on the fields as she walked up the old roadway, pitted and bumpy, towards the house, its sturdy square shape standing out against the hills; its grey stone looking smart in the clear light, belied by its messy interior. Her childhood home.
As she crossed the muddy courtyard, she took a deep breath. Okay. Calm. Professional. Collected. She wasn’t going to let anyone wind her up. Everything was going to be —
‘SIIIIS!’
‘Oh man, is that Flora? How fat has she got? Is she recognisable?’
‘Widen the doors!’
Flora shut her eyes.
‘Shut up, you guys!’ she said, horrified and yet relieved at the same time. If they were being rude to her, they couldn’t be too furious. Right?
First, her brothers Innes and Fintan came tumbling out of the door; Innes tall and pale like her mother, broad-built and handsome. He’d been married, briefly, and spent as much time with his young daughter as he could manage. Next to him was Fintan, slender, dark and nervous. And finally, behind them, Hamish, who was utterly huge and did most of the heavy lifting. Innes covered the heavy thinking, more or less.
Her father wasn’t there, Flora noticed.
The boys mock-embraced her, and she mock-cuffed them. They were as awkward as she was, she noticed.
The farmhouse was old and rambling, its dark passageways leading to small rooms here and there. With a good sledgehammer, it could have been absolutely exceptional, with uninterrupted views down to the sea across their own land – sheep and cows were their main concern: hardy little short-tails that weren’t great for eating but produced strong, soft wool that went to the looms of the other islands and the mainland alike, making high-quality knitwear and blankets and tartan; and the cows were wonderful milkers.
On a good day, both the bright blue sky and the deep green fields looked to be full of little fluffy clouds. Closer to the sea, the land turned sandier, and there was seaweed and a few ropes of mussels.
Flora took a deep breath before she followed the boys inside.
For a second, her heart felt heavy. Then, as she stepped into the cold hallway, she was almost knocked over by a huge, hairy, slightly croaky woofing thing.
‘BRAMBLE!’
The dog had not forgotten her; he was utterly thrilled beyond belief to see her, leaping up and down, weeing slightly on the flagstones and doing his best to engulf her in his delight.
‘Someone’s pleased to see me, at least,’ said Flora, and the boys shrugged, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ then Innes asked her to put the kettle on and she gave him the Vs and put her bag down and looked around her and thought, Oh Lord.
Chapter Seven
If anything, it was worse than she’d expected.
The large kitchen was at the back of the house, overlooking the bay; it got any rays of sun there were to catch. Inside, it was as if a clock had stopped. Dust lay on the surfaces; spiders frolicked happily in the corners. Flora put her handbag down on the kitchen table, the same huge table that had seen fights (sometimes physical if the boys were in a mood); Christmases with grandparents and aunts and uncles from all over the island; schoolgirl dreams; tear-stained homework; big games of Risk when the weather stopped anything but basic animal care; tinned soup when the storms came and the snow sat and the ferries couldn’t get over; impassioned debates about Scottish independence and politics and anything else that crossed their minds; their father sitting quietly as he always did, reading Farmers Weekly and demanding to be left in peace with his bottle of ale in front of the fire after tea, which was always at 5 p.m. They went to bed early.
When Flora had left, she had been perfectly happy to leave that table behind, with its timeless rhythm of her mothers’ stews and casseroles and roasts and soups and breakfasts and ploughman’s lunches. Her brothers grew ever bigger and noisier, but life never changed, never moved on. The boys st
ayed at home, more or less, the dinners kept appearing, and Flora had felt so stifled; stifled by the pheasant that popped up around November; by the same chipped blue and white mugs on the mantelpiece; the spring daisies and the Christmas peonies.
She had flown, not wanting to be weighed down as her mother was by the seasonal thrum of being a farmer’s wife; the endless staring at grey skies and wheeling birds and dancing boats.
Now she looked at the table, piled high with dirty cups and old newspapers, and felt the grains of her life written into it, unerasable; simply there.
When her mother had come home for the last time, the boys heaved one of the beds out of the spare room downstairs into pride of place by the big window in the kitchen. The legs squeaked on the heavy flagstones, but at least that room was always warm and cosy, and she could see everything that was going on. Nobody said, as they carried it in, what it was: a deathbed.
The previous day, Flora had returned, flying up from her probationary year alone and practically friendless in a scary new city; horrified at the speed of the diagnosis her mother had kept from her own family all year.
Saif, the local GP, had popped over that morning to make sure she was organised with drugs – it was only palliatives now, painkillers. There was meant to be a strict regime as to when she could take them, and how many. Both the local nurse and Saif quietly asked Flora not to quote them on this, but to give her as many as she wanted, whenever she wanted them.
Numbly, Flora had nodded her head, as if pretending she understood; as if she had the faintest idea what was happening, staring at them in horrified disbelief. Then she had stood, shoulder to shoulder with the boys as they brought her mother home for the last time.
That evening, her mother had woken up, or seemed to, briefly, as the sky was beginning to turn a fulsome pink, and Flora sat next to her and gave her some water, although she was close to choking, and her medicine, which relaxed her mother right away, up to the point where she was able to stroke Flora’s hand; and Flora leaned her head against her mother’s and they breathed together, in, out, and everyone came over; and who even knew exactly when the last breath came or who noticed it first or how it was taken, but it came; in the place where she had taken nearly every breath she ever took, and they were incredibly grateful to have her there, at home, not connected to things that beeped, or in a sterile ward, or surrounded by people shouting and trying useless manoeuvres, but where the old blackened kettle on top of the oven was still set to whistle; where Bramble’s tail slowly thumped a rhythm on the rug as it always did; where the ancient pile of unused keys – the house was never locked – sat in the bowl with mysterious bits and bobs of screws and handy things; where the curtains still hung that Annie had made herself when she’d first moved in there, so many years ago, a young bride full, Flora imagined, of cheer and hopefulness: orange flowers on a blue background, which had been fashionable, then hideous, and were now on the point of tipping back into being fashionable again.
There had been babies on the rug in that room, then children tearing around, the endless comings and goings of the farmhands; how many vegetable soups, and apple pies; how many scraped knees, and tears wiped away, and muddy footprints in various sizes of wellingtons; how many birthday cakes – chocolate for Fintan and Hamish, lemon for Innes, vanilla for Flora – how many candles blown out and Christmas presents wrapped, and how many cups of tea…
And it had all vanished in the blink of an eye when Flora had been twenty-three years old, and she had run away as far and fast as she could; couldn’t bear to think of it, never ever wanted to come back; wanted nothing of a life that had been ripped from all of them; didn’t want to assume the mantle of the family’s pain, come home as they’d all expected. As the entire island had expected.
She stood there now, in the dark, dusty, unloved kitchen, braced herself on the back of the chair and simply let the tears flow.
Chapter Eight
She heard her father – or rather, his dog, Bracken, woofing hello at the intruder – before she saw him, and rubbed her face quickly
Eck MacKenzie had always been strong-looking. But his blue eyes were sinking now; there were broken veins on his cheeks from decades of high winds on the moorland, and his hair was thinning under his omnipresent tweed bunnet.
‘Flora,’ he said, nodding.
They had spoken, of course, since the funeral. But only briefly. She’d invited him down to London and he’d said, ‘Aye, maybe, maybe,’ which they both knew meant never, never.
‘You’re no back to stay?’
Flora shook her head. ‘But I’m working up here,’ she said eagerly. ‘I mean, I’ll be here for a bit. Maybe a week?’
He nodded. ‘Aye.’ Her father’s ayes, she well knew, could mean many things. This one meant, well, that’s fine as far as that goes.
After that, everyone stood around. If Mum had been there, Flora thought, she’d have been bustling, making tea, thrusting cake on everyone whether they wanted it or not; making everything cosy and nice and not strange.
Instead, everyone looked a bit awkward.
‘Mm, tea?’ said Flora, which helped a bit.
They sat around the kitchen table bleakly. There was almost no food in, and everything felt like a gap.
‘So, how’s work?’ said Fintan eventually, as if it had to be dragged out of him.
‘Uh, good,’ said Flora. ‘I’m up here to talk to Colton Rogers.’
‘Good luck with that,’ snorted her father.
‘That bastard!’ said Innes.
Uh-oh, thought Flora.
‘Hang on. He’s nice!’ she said.
The boys exchanged glances.
‘Well, we wouldn’t know,’ said Fintan.
‘He doesn’t have anything to do with the local people,’ said Innes. ‘Doesn’t employ us, doesn’t buy from us.’
‘He’s building some fancy-pants place over on the north of the island,’ said Fintan. ‘For rich idiots to fly in by helicopter and have “experiences”.’
‘Idiots,’ said Innes.
‘And he gets arseholes up here to hunt grouse. They come in the Harbour’s Rest and behave like English wankers,’ said Fintan.
‘Well, I expect you’re very friendly and give them the benefit of the doubt,’ said Flora.
‘Not nice people,’ said Hamish, shaking his head and giving a biscuit to Bramble, who was standing there, poised for exactly that eventuality.
Her father wasn’t even at the table with them. He was sitting by the fireside, stoking up the grate and sipping a large glass of whisky, even though it was early in the day. Flora looked at him, then back at her plate.
‘Are you guys eating… I mean, are you looking after yourselves all right?’ she asked.
‘We tidied up for you coming,’ frowned Fintan.
‘Seriously?’ said Flora.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Fintan was on the defensive immediately.
‘No, no, I was just saying…’
‘We eat sausages,’ said Hamish, frowning. ‘Also sometimes bacon.’
‘You’ll kill yourselves!’
Her father was looking thinner. Flora wondered if he was eating much at all, or if it was all just whisky. It had been two years; surely they must be starting to get over it.
Not that she was.
‘Yeah, thanks for the life advice you’ve flown all this way to give us, Flora,’ said Innes. ‘We’ll just stop working twelve-hour days… How long is your working day again?’
‘It’s plenty long,’ snapped back Flora. ‘And I commute.’
‘Do you cook?’
‘No. But there’s M and S, and Deliveroo…’
Flora looked at their faces and decided this was not the time to attempt to explain Deliveroo.
‘So,’ she said, glancing around, ‘how’s the farm doing?’
There was a very long pause. Innes stared at his plate.
‘Why? You going to come back and lawyer it up?’ said Fintan s
hortly.
‘No,’ said Flora. ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Not well,’ said Innes shortly. ‘Not all of us are pulling our weight.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Fintan.
‘You heard.’
‘I do my bit.’
‘You do the absolute bare minimum. Thank God Hamish picks up your slack.’
‘I like cows,’ said Hamish.
‘Shut up, Hamish,’ said Fintan. ‘You like everything.’
Without looking at him, Flora passed Hamish her last biscuit. He ate it in two bites.
‘How are things, Dad?’ said Flora.
‘Och. Fine,’ said her dad without turning round. He kept staring at the fire, Bracken’s head in his lap.
‘Right,’ said Flora. ‘Great.’
Innes switched on the TV. This was the only new thing in the house; it was huge, and tuned to Sky Sports 9, which showed the shinty. He turned it up loud and handed round a bag of horrible, greasy sausage rolls he’d brought up from the village. And Flora sat and watched in silence with the others, the gap inside her so vast and hollow she could hardly breathe.
Chapter Nine
At 9 p.m., Flora got a message from Colton Rogers’ office that he would be caught up tomorrow and wouldn’t be able to see her after all, which was even more useless. She texted Kai about it, who got back to her straightaway.
Hey babe. How is it?