One Night on the Island(75)

Cleo





2 November


Salvation Island


MESSAGE RECEIVED, UNIVERSE


Karen Carpenter was bang on the money about rainy days and Mondays. It’s Monday morning and it’s rainy, a double whammy, but I’m not complaining because it suits my mood. I’ve already been up once and gone back to bed, the weather can do whatever the hell it wants.

Mack’s been gone for six days now. It feels like six hundred years and then it feels like six seconds, as if I blinked him away. How I wish I could blink him back. I won’t even try to deny how much I’d love to look out of the kitchen window and see him walking down the hill, or to roll over and find him sleeping in bed beside me. It’s excruciating. Micro-love, we called it, but this feels like a major-love hangover. I’ve gone full-on mope – ‘Thunder Road’ on repeat, can’t face food, haven’t brushed my hair. I hate feeling this rough, it’s as if I’m letting myself down. I stood on the porch at first light this morning and squinted out to sea, wondering if the Pioneer had lifted anchor and sailed without me, bitterly disappointed by my lack of gumption. ‘I didn’t expect to feel this bloody terrible!’ I shouted, leaning forward over the railing. ‘It’s not my sodding fault I miss him this much!’ I yelled, full of fury, shocked by the actual physical pain of heartsickness. I need Mack to post me back that sliver of my heart, I think it might have been arterial. Is that a good enough reason to get in touch, even though we promised we wouldn’t? We have each other’s numbers; we scrawled them on the rules sheet on the fridge, for emergency contact only. I could sit on top of Wailing Hill and call him right now, listen to the clicks and silences of my desperation beam out across the miles to wherever he is. I won’t. Of course I won’t. But the fact that I could almost makes me feel worse. It’ll get easier, it has to. I won’t die of heart malaise. This isn’t a Shakespearean play. I’ll pull myself together soon, honestly I will, and I’ll brush my hair, eat something. Delete ‘Thunder Road’ from my playlist. Even as I think it, I press play one more time. Bruce plays his harmonica, soulful, and I curl up in a ball in the middle of the bed and cry.

There’s a note shoved under the door when I open my eyes. I see it from across the room, a flash of white on the floorboards, and I jump out of bed and scrabble for it in case it’s from Mack. Oh God! Did he come back? I straighten and lean against the door to open the folded piece of paper. It isn’t from Mack.

Hey Cleo, don’t miss group today, we have something for you. D xx



Delta. I sigh as I balance the kettle on the stove. I don’t think I can muster myself enough to walk over to the village this afternoon. I’m still wearing yesterday’s jeans and crumpled red-and-black-checked shirt, and my hair is more knot than not. I’m not going to go.

I take my coffee out on to the porch to think about it some more. I danced on this very spot on my birthday, spun round by Mack, my dress twirling out around my knees. I close my eyes and try to summon the joyful girl I was in that exact moment, but she’s beyond me. I take a sip of coffee, hot scald in the cold wind, and I sit down because standing is suddenly too much effort. I sit cross-legged and cradle my cup for warmth, my eyes fixed on the bay. He’s out there somewhere, across fathoms of water and several time zones, back to being a father and a son, brilliant photographer and discarded husband. Only maybe he’s not discarded any more. I had no idea it was possible to miss someone this much. I keep reminding myself that we had such a brief affair, it’s unreasonable to allow myself to fall this shockingly low. I put my half-full mug down on the sandy boards, sick of coffee on an empty stomach.

Don’t miss group. I expect Delta knew that any phrase that allowed me a choice would fall on deaf ears, whereas I feel less able to ignore such a direct order. Don’t miss group today. I circle my thumb over the crystal face of my father’s watch. I’ve worn it constantly since my birthday, pressing my cheek against the cool glass sometimes for comfort. Midday, it tells me. Get up off the floor, child, he tells me. Brush your hair and walk your bum over that hill. Don’t miss group. I sigh as I pick up my mug and head inside in search of a hairbrush.

Brianne notices me first and fires herself across the room.

‘You came,’ she says. ‘Come in, let’s get you out of that wet coat, I’ll hang it over the radiator to dry.’ Her eyes brim with motherly concern, even though she can’t be more than a few years older than me. She hurries me across to the group, where the women are already shifting seats to make space for me on the sofa beside Delta.

‘Come on, love,’ Delta says, patting the cushion. ‘Sit yourself down and get warm here now.’

I lower myself in between Delta and Erin, who rubs my knee and hands me a cup of coffee. ‘Delta was sure you’d come, we made you one ready. There’s cake too. You can take some back to the lodge if you don’t feel able for it now.’

I only realize my hands are shaking when I grip the blue-and-white-striped mug.

‘Hey.’ Delta puts her arm around my shoulders. ‘It’s okay. You can let it all out.’

And I do. Someone takes the precarious coffee from my hands as my body heaves with sobs, and I tell them how terribly I miss Mack in jerky sentences, and they say all the right things and gather in close around me as I cry it out. They know; I can see it on all of their faces. They know there’s no such thing as micro-love. There’s just love.