One Night on the Island(3)

‘Fix your eyes on the horizon, it helps with seasickness.’

I squint at the only other passenger on board the boat, unappreciative of his unsolicited advice. I can’t understand how I’m being flung around like a rag doll, yet he’s managing to stay stuck to the opposite bench as if he’s strapped himself down. He might have. He looks like someone who never leaves the house without a spare carabiner clip in his pocket. He probably goes on SAS adventure holidays for fun.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I shout to make myself heard.

‘Okay, it’s just you look a little … green,’ he shouts back. I can’t quite place his accent – American, maybe?

I feel that he’s made a snap judgement about me; he considers me wimpy and unfit for the high seas. And I may well be both of those things, but I’ve had enough of people making assumptions about me.

‘Just trying to help.’ He shrugs when I don’t reply. ‘If you’re gonna hurl, aim over the side. That’s all I’m saying.’

And there we go. Jane refuses Tarzan’s offer to hitch a ride on his rope swing, Tarzan gets the hump.

‘I’ll do my best,’ I yell over the racket of the engine. ‘Apologies in advance if I miss and throw up in your face.’

God, that was a bit gross, even for me; I’m grouchy in the way only being fearful for your life can make you. And also because he’s wearing a parka that looks as if a million geese died to insulate him, the hood bigger than the tent me and Rubes took to Glastonbury a few summers ago. I can barely see through the blowing salt-sting. At least my feet are dry, which is more than I can say for the rest of me. I shake with terror every time we bounce off the crest of a wave. I did not sign up to drown with a Stay-Puft American in the middle of the Atlantic.

I don’t actually fall to my knees and kiss the sand as I clamber off the boat and wade the last few feet on to Salvation Island, but I feel like I should.

‘You know where you’re headed?’ The skipper peers at me through a long tangle of grey hair. ‘Only I need to make it back to the mainland before dark.’

Of course, I have absolutely no clue where I’m headed, but in that same way that you don’t tell the hairdresser you hate the fringe they’ve just hacked into your hair, I nod and say I’m fine. He lingers for a moment, watching me.

‘Only one way to go anyhow, really.’

He nods to the right, into the quickly gathering gloom. I can just about make out the figure of the other passenger from the boat, already striking out into the mists in his massive red coat. No dallying around for him – probably a local who knows the place like the back of his hand.

‘Follow your nose, you’ll come to Brianne’s shop soon enough.’

And just like that, he leaves me, raising his hand in a parting gesture as he jogs back down the rocky beach towards his boat.

And now I’m here, alone, at what feels like the end of the world. All I can see is a deserted beach in front of me and boggy fields sloping up and away into the mist-hung distance behind me. I’m not as scared as I probably should be, but perhaps that’s because my life was in actual, genuine peril ten minutes ago. I breathe in a deep lungful of cold, grey Irish air and find myself quite excited.

I’ve had a creeping feeling over recent months, a nagging sense that it might be time for something new. I was twenty-six when I signed up to share the search for my flamingo with the nation, and back then it was a lark, a brilliant way to earn money. I had arrived in London a couple of years before, champagne dreams and lemonade pockets, fresh off the train from northern suburbia, and somehow, someway, I managed to dig my claws in deep enough to not have to buy a return ticket back home again. I flung myself at every available opportunity and shoved my foot in any open doorway, buoyed by youth and an unshakable certainty that I was hurtling in the right direction. And, little by little, sofa by bedsit, crummy job by slightly less crummy job, I finally hurtled into the laser eyeline of Alison Stone. A woman who looked at me and saw ambition and grit where others, my family included, saw naivety and recklessness. In truth, she probably needed a dating columnist and I flew through her door at the opportune moment, but it didn’t matter because I’d found a nest and I made sure to feather it well enough for no passing magpie to oust me. For the next few years, Cleo Wilder became a woman in search of her flamingo, and I’ve had some truly brilliant times; I’ve met people who’ve become close friends, been to places I’d never have otherwise discovered, and I’ve laughed until tears have rolled down my face. I’ve cried sometimes too, of course, because occasionally someone has appeared flamingo-like for a while but turned out to be nothing more than a passing pigeon. If I had to pin a word on my feelings about my life at this very moment, though, I’d choose exhausted. I’m tired down to my internal organs, and there is a bed somewhere on this island with my name on it.

My most pressing priority right now is to find Brianne’s shop, which Ali’s print-out reliably informs me is just inland, collect the keys and head to my temporary new home. Otter Lodge. It sounds like the kind of place that might have nice pillows, so I put one determined foot in front of the other and set off in search of civilization.

Civilization turns out to be closed. The sign on the door of the small, white shiplap island shop tells me that it opens for a couple of hours every day. But thankfully there is also an envelope tacked to the door with ‘Keys to Otter’ written across it in blue marker pen. Okay. Wow. If I tried that in London, someone else would move in and start a marijuana farm within the hour. Pulling the envelope down from the door, I turn it over and see that someone has scrawled a message on the back.