One Night on the Island(64)

I sit on the porch steps with a beer and my camera to watch dusk descend. Three days. I have just three more days until I have to leave. On the one hand, I’m counting the seconds until I see the boys, but on the other, I’m hoarding every minute I still have on Salvation Island. At Otter Lodge. With Cleo. If I’m lucky, I might see the island and the lodge again in years to come, bring the kids here even, but Cleo … I know I won’t see her again. We are not meant to exist beyond this place. I can’t shake the feeling that it was selfish of me to take her up on her ‘holiday romance’ offer, to allow myself to find solace in her laughter, to find oblivion in her body and joy in her easy company. I’ve wrapped her around me like a shield, letting the arrows bounce off her so they don’t pierce my heart. I truly hope they haven’t hurt her in the process. My life will be waiting for me when I get home and there will be no shield. No Cleo. I’ve spent this last year alone, but always with the hope and expectation that it was a passing measure, that if I could just be patient enough and unobtrusive enough, I’d get to go home again at the end of it. And I was patient. And, truly, I was unobtrusive. And it was hellish, the daily battle with myself not to drive over and see the kids, see Susie, to beg to be allowed to stay for dinner. To be included. It makes my skin crawl and my heart palpitate when I think back to my lowest ebbs, to the long days and dark nights when it just felt too much. I roll my shoulders and knock back a good slug of beer, washing the bitter thoughts away so I can concentrate on the good things, on my here and now.

It’s been a spectacular day weather-wise, Cleo couldn’t have wished for brighter. I’m glad; this whole ceremony obviously means a lot to her. It sounded like a crazy idea when she first told me, but the more I’ve gotten to understand her, the more I’ve come to see that her time here isn’t really about her work. She seems disenchanted with her life in London, almost as if she was running away from the chaos towards anything that resembled calm. I know her just well enough now to find it out of character for her to shy away from something, and having been on the receiving end of her stubbornness, I know she’s got an iron seam running through her core. I’m not sure she’s even aware of it.

A white flash appears in my peripheral vision – Cleo. White dress whipping around her knees, pennant of dark hair streaming out behind her, the basket she’s carrying swinging in the breeze. She looks like freedom striding back across the beach, framed by a golden-streaked sunset. A photographer’s dream. I raise my beer in greeting and she speeds up, laughing in wonder when she’s a few feet from the lodge steps. She pauses, her head on one side, taking in the coloured glow of the bulbs I’ve hung around the lodge’s porch.

‘You came back at just the right moment to appreciate them.’ I smile, reaching for her hand as I stand up.

‘How?’ she says. ‘I mean …’

‘Raff loaned them to me.’ I headed up to the village yesterday to scout out party supplies and hid them beneath the porch. ‘They’re the pub’s Christmas lights.’

Vintage fairground colours wash her face as she gazes up at me – rose pink, sunbeam gold, apple green. ‘You did this for me?’ she says.

‘Hey, a girl only marries herself once, right?’ I say. ‘How did it go?’

She nods slowly, her dark eyes triumphant. ‘Mack, it was amazing,’ she says. The words bubble from her like champagne. ‘Even walking over there, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel, but the minute I got to the clearing, this feeling of utter calmness came over me, and rightness, and – oh, I don’t know, I just … I needed it more than I realized.’

I pick up her right hand. ‘And now you’re married,’ I say, looking at Dolores’s ring on her finger.

She grins. ‘And I don’t even need to change my surname.’

‘Easier for paperwork,’ I say. ‘Hungry?’

She nods. ‘Starving.’

‘In that case, welcome to your wedding reception.’

She looks at me, quizzical. ‘My what now?’

I hold my hand up to stall her while I duck inside the lodge for a second. I pull out the plaid rug and flick it out on to the porch floor with one hand; I don’t tell her I killed ten minutes earlier perfecting that move.

I add a couple of cushions, and then hold out the softest blanket for her shoulders.

‘Your table.’

I see it on her face, the gladness, and it warms me. Nipping back inside, I pull out the picnic basket Brianne found for me and place it down on the rug between us.

‘Mack,’ she says, soft. ‘I really didn’t expect any of this.’

‘I know that,’ I say, twisting the wire from the champagne cork. ‘I wanted to add to your memories.’

She smiles, accepting the glass I offer her. ‘Well, you’ve certainly done that,’ she says. ‘Dolores’s ring, Delta’s flowers, Brianne’s cake, and now this. It’s been a day full of surprises.’

‘And the night is young.’

Her eyes open wider.

‘I’m joking,’ I say. ‘This is kind of the pinnacle.’ I touch the rim of my glass to hers. ‘To you, Cleo Wilder.’

She grins. ‘Cheers.’

She puts on her pre-prepared wedding-day playlist, some stuff I recognize and some I don’t, and she shares snippets about her afternoon as we eat the food I’ve picked up. It isn’t flashy, just things I could lay my hands on. Chicken salad rolls, potato salad from Brianne’s store, olives fiery with chilli oil, a couple of slices of quiche from the café.