The Monster's Wife(40)

When she reached the boat, she stopped and clutched her chest. Her shoulders ached. She couldn’t catch her breath. She gripped the rim of the boat, gasping. Behind her, Andrew’s feet pounded in the water, churning over the sound of her heart in her ears.

“Told you not to run.” He laid his hand on her back.

The touch brought back that drunken night by the bonfire, him moving against her, the pale eyes watching them. She flinched it away. “I -”

“Rest. You’ll be right in a moment.”

His hand stayed stubbornly upon her and she was too tired to shrug him off. She doubled up over the side of the Elver like an old man, gasping for air. It was too hard to fight off her illness and Andrew all at once. She was stuck with them both, it seemed.

What if she died here and he was the last person to speak to her?

But at least she’d go to a better place, to May. As she thought the thought, the pain across her shoulders began to fade, though her heart still drummed. She leaned low, listening to her wheezing breaths, then blinked away her dizziness and looked at the boat.

The hull had some water in it, but not enough to cause trouble. The oars floated on the water, rolling with the tide. The creel behind the tiller was soggy and salt-bleached as if a storm had caught the boat. A morsel of dark cloth was snagged on the catch. Her breaths came easier now, but a sick feeling was growing in her.

“May.” Her voice was a whisper.

“Hush, now.” He stroked her hair.

She reached for the cloth, but her arm wouldn’t go far enough. “I need to-”

He leaned over her and caught up the cloth. It was knitted from blue wool and despite being weathered the skill of the needle was plain. Threaded through the collar was a wisp of scarlet - a colour that would suit black hair and eyes. “Why do you want this damp rag?” Andrew wrinkled his nose.

With shaking hands, she took it from him. “Because it’s May’s.”

All the way down to the croft, Andrew stayed by her side and she didn’t think to shake him off. Her mind circled round furiously. That night the pair of them had taken the Elver out, May had been wearing Dod’s old oilskin, not the cloak. It was hard to see this scrap as anything other than a sign: that May had been in that boat since they’d rowed out in it together and had worn her cloak; that she was alive somewhere not on the island.

Oona didn’t see the grass or the heather or the other crofts go by because her mind was on the hard circle of metal trapped in May’s petticoats. Perhaps it had been her fare to freedom and that’s what her business with Cormick had been. How happy a thought it would be to be certain that May had escaped, was alive, was free.

As she went passed Norquoy, she looked at the scrap in her hands, knowing she should run in and tell Dod and Effie the news. But her eyes were caught on a frayed end of wool that had run away from the cloth’s weft. It was just a twist of blue that had fled its loop, but soon a hole would grow. When she ran her thumb across it, she could feel the absence swelling. She held it to her face and smelled May’s scent of lime and ash and lavender. If she had gone, Oona would never see her, never hold her.

Andrew stopped, took Oona’s arm. “Why would bits of May’s cloak be in that wreck?”

The golden picture of May’s freedom hadn’t faded yet from Oona’s mind. “Maybe she went to stay with her cousins in Kirkwall.” The dreamer in her believed it. But there was another, darker part of her that thought of the boat and the crates, of Cormick’s anger and all the mess that May could have dropped herself in.

Andrew’s jaw tightened. “And abandoned Stuart at the altar.” The thought seemed impossible to him. But then, of course, he worshipped Stuart as some sort of deity.

Oona could not meet his eyes. Her optimism depended on May having left Stuart behind: it was the only way of believing she was alive. “You’ve missed my point, Andrew. We never found a mote of her until this... Now…this. This is a sign, I believe, that we must search harder, that we... What if she went in the sea…” She couldn’t bear to finish the thought.

Andrew shrugged, seemingly untroubled by the thought. “And if she did, how should we look for her - hold our breaths and paddle round the bay? I can’t even credit that scrap is hers.”

She broke away from him and walked to the door. “Granny knitted it for her. I know it like the path to the big house.”

“Then you know it well.” Sighing, he followed her into the croft. “Still think you’re fussing at nothing.”

At the door, she turned to face him. “I must rise with the lark tomorrow.”

“As must I.” Andrew cast a wistful look at the soup pot on the stove. “Go on and tell your Granny you had another turn.”

“Who made you my keeper all of a sudden?” Oona turned to make certain that Granny was napping in front of the fire.

Andrew’s jaw became tight as a fist. He said nothing else, but walked to the door, stooping to fit his head under the low sedge thatch. Outside, he turned to her and his face softened. “Don’t run around hunting for May.”

She rolled her eyes. “What am I supposed to do, walk slowly everywhere I go?”

“Chrissakes, woman, you’re maddening.”

“Why don’t you stay far away from me then, save your sanity?”