One Night on the Island(68)

‘I think I see the boat,’ he says, standing.

I see it in the distance too, and it all feels horribly, lurchingly real. ‘Oh, Mack,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘You’re really leaving.’

He turns and pulls me into his arms, the tightest of hugs, the hardest of goodbyes.

He holds my tear-streaked face in his hands. ‘You’re the micro-love of my life.’

I look into those wonderful, mismatched eyes and find them brimming with ‘another time, another place’ longing. ‘I micro-love you too,’ I say.

Our kiss is tear-salty and endless, bittersweet beautiful. I hear the boat’s engine idle as it draws near to the beach and I have to stop myself from clinging on, from begging him to stay, because I know he can’t. I even know that being alone is the right thing for me right now, but none of that matters because the thought of never seeing his face again is killing me.

‘I won’t call,’ he says against my hair.

‘And I won’t call,’ I say. ‘Oh, I have something for you,’ I add, remembering. I dig in my jeans pocket and press something small into his hand.

‘Chalk,’ he says, laughing and crying as he looks at it. ‘I’ll keep it for ever.’

‘I’ll think of you whenever I hear Springsteen,’ I say. And every other day of my life, I don’t say.

‘I’ll think of you too, often,’ he says.

We turn to look at the skipper of the boat as he trudges up the beach and calls out to us, a huge net of orange pumpkins leaving drag marks in the sand behind him. ‘Just the one of you, is it?’

Mack nods. ‘Just me.’

‘I’ll take your bags down, will I?’ If he can see that we’re both a mess, he has the good grace not to mention it, leaving just one holdall behind on the sand for Mack to pick up.

‘Right then,’ I say, breathing deeply through my nose. ‘You best get going.’

He takes my cue, nodding, brisk. ‘Can’t miss that connection.’

He looks over his shoulder at the waiting boat and then into my eyes. ‘I’ll be seeing you then,’ he says, even though we both know he won’t. He cradles my face between his hands, one last moment of connection.

I pull my jacket tighter around my ribs, though it’s a warm day by Salvation standards. ‘Just go,’ I say. ‘Go and don’t look back.’ I aim for brave, but the truth is I don’t want him to see me fall to pieces.

He stares at me, long and so full of meaning that it speaks a million words, and then he turns and walks away, his holdall slung over his shoulder. I watch him all the way to the shoreline, see him hand his bag to the skipper, and then he hesitates. He hesitates and my heart goes into weightless freefall behind my ribcage because he’s running back up the beach towards me.

‘I told you not to look back,’ I say, trembling.

‘One,’ he says, breathing hard, clutching my hands. ‘Promise me you’ll write that damn book, Cleo.’

I nod and I cry because this is all so hard on my heart.

‘Two,’ he says. ‘You’re in here for ever.’ He touches one hand to his chest, choked up.

‘And three …’

‘Don’t say it.’ I put my fingertips against his lips and he closes his eyes and kisses them. ‘Just go.’

This time, he doesn’t hesitate. I watch him clamber aboard the boat and I rest my backside against the sea wall and raise my hand. A farewell, a salute, a thank you.

He stands at the bow of the boat as the engines power up, and as it begins to reverse, he cups his hands around his mouth and shouts something to me. The wind catches his words, delivering them to me just as the boat turns away towards open waters.

‘Three – I don’t regret you.’

I stand there sobbing as I yell it back at the top of my lungs, bent forward with the effort, hoping the wind will be as reliable a messenger to him as it was to me. And I don’t. I don’t regret a single second of us, but right now it feels as if, in mending him, I’ve broken a part of myself.

It’s been eight hours now since Mack left. I’m not ashamed to say I cried like a lost child as soon as I walked back into the safe haven of Otter Lodge. He laid a fire before he left to make sure there was a warm welcome waiting for me, but there wasn’t because he wasn’t there any more. For such a small space, it feels cavernous without his belongings. No huge red coat hanging on the back of the door, no camera parts littering the table, no unfamiliar toiletries mixed with mine in the bathroom.

I sat outside on the porch steps first thing this morning while he packed, dolphin-watching with my morning coffee rather than witness him extricate himself piece by piece. You might suppose it would be easier because I always knew that it was going to end so abruptly. You’d be wrong. I think back to the moment I was bold enough to suggest we throw caution to the wind and I wonder if I’d do the same again if I knew then how I’d feel now. Probably. Definitely. Of course I would because my time with Mack has been magnificent. There’s a price to pay for full immersion in a warm bath of beautiful, sudden love, though. You know that moment when you step out of the bath and snatch for your towel to get dry and warm again? There’s no towel. I’m shivering. I’m exposed and alone, and I have to stand here like this until the sun dries me off, eventually. I realize I’ve unintentionally broken one of my vows: protect myself from harm. Because make no bones about it, this feels like harm. As if I’m injured, as if a piece of me has been amputated. It’s shocking to me that I didn’t know him a month ago. It’s such an insignificant amount of time, too short, surely, for someone to impact my life so much. Am I being foolish to attach such weight to our short affair? No. I’ve been in relationships before where I’ve got to know someone in hops and catches, a couple of hours at the cinema, an afternoon at the Tate, home again alone for days in between. Those relationships lasted weeks or months or even years but were never emotionally as long, and definitely not as intense. We’ve rowed, we’ve laughed, we’ve cried and we’ve loved. And now we’ve said goodbye. Our snow-globe romance, a perfectly encased beginning, middle and end. I drag the quilt from the bed to the sofa and stare into the fire, remembering, even though it would be more beneficial to forget. I don’t want to forget Mack Sullivan. Will he fade from my mind no matter how hard I try to hold on? I don’t have his photographs to look back on. I don’t have anything to remember him by. At least while I’m here on the island, I can see him everywhere I look – down by the shore as I stand at the kitchen window, across the table from me at breakfast, beside me in bed if I wake in the middle of the night. But I won’t have those familiar comforts when I leave Salvation. When I leave the island, I’ll leave the last traces of us behind me on the sand. I don’t want to go.