One Night on the Island(81)

I lean back against the driver’s door, feeling like I’ve just been in a bar-room brawl. ‘Okay.’ I don’t have enough in the tank to offer anything else.

‘He’s just … he’s just a kid trying childish manipulation tactics to guilt his parents into getting back together.’

I know she’s right. I’m not mad at Nate, I’m just all-round mad at the world right now. I’m not mad at Susie either because despite our current differences I know she wouldn’t have okayed that speech.

‘I’m sorry for what I said in there,’ she says. ‘About the teeth. You’re a really great dad.’

We fall silent as a group of moms pass by on the sidewalk, all making a bad job of pretending not to stare at us.

‘It means everything,’ I say. ‘What Leo and Nate think of me means everything.’

She looks at the ground, too late for me to miss the damp tears that pool on her lashes. ‘It used to be my opinion that mattered,’ she says.

I’m struck by this. Even though she’s the one who no longer needs me, she still wants me to need her. I know she’s still getting used to the idea of me with someone else, but the revelation is eye-opening to me.

‘Your opinion will always matter to me, Susie.’

She swallows and lifts her head, eyes as blue as my mood. ‘Come back to the house for coffee?’





Cleo





20 November


Salvation Island


HAVE I FAILED YOU, EMMA WATSON?


Fifty days. I landed on this island fifty days ago, a fish out of water, an out-of-sorts girl in stiff new walking boots. I leave today, finally, and it’s no exaggeration to say I feel like a different woman will step aboard that boat back. How can it possibly have been only fifty days? I hope I’ve bathed in enough bracing Salvation air for it to have left a permanent seal of protection on my skin. So much inside me has changed. The sea conditions are fair out there today; it’s no mill pond, but calm enough for safe passage.

My bags are packed and the lodge is spick and span. There’s just time for one last coffee on the front steps before Brianne’s husband comes to lug my bags over the hill for me. Yesterday was a barrage of tearful goodbyes, raised glasses at the Salvation Arms and promises to stay in touch. I feel as if I’m leaving home, which is bizarre really as I’m going home.

I can’t begin to put into words how much I’m going to miss Otter Lodge. I take endless photographs on my phone – nothing like Mack quality but I want to capture it all today so that when I’m back in my own bed tonight I can look and see it again. Maybe I’ll send the photos to Mack too, once I have the kind of real-world data that allows for picture messages. I’m sure he’d love to see them. He’s been texting me on and off, three things as always, snippets of his days that reveal how much he’s struggling. I’ve been replying with a list sometimes too. It feels like bending the rules of our pact rather than breaking them. Holiday romances burn bright then burn out – my own words. I guess I didn’t realize how slowly the heat dies down.

I tip my too-cold coffee on the sand beside the steps and sigh. Oh, Emma Watson, is this even slightly what you meant? Have I failed you? I didn’t self-couple in the way I planned when I arrived here, and I definitely didn’t self-couple at all for eight cataclysmic days in the middle, but actually, since then, I think I’ve self-coupled in a wildly effective manner. Me, my squares blanket and my beloved laptop full of words: we are as one. If the boat gets into any trouble out on the ocean later, I’m hanging on tight to those two things until I get rescued.

Cameron appeared bang on time with the barrow for my bags just now. I’m much fitter than I was when I arrived here, but even so I was almost bent double with the effort of trying to keep up with him over the hill. When he glanced my way and caught me almost dry-heaving, he suggested I do as Brianne often does and hop on his back. I didn’t need to be asked twice – I clambered up that man like a kid on an apple tree.

‘You make a most excellent taxi,’ I grin, as he deposits me by the sea wall. ‘What’s the fare?’

He piles my bags up. The boat is already here, moored just off the bay, and I’m suddenly full of panicky, ‘I’m not ready yet’ emotion because this is it.

‘On the house,’ he says, and then he swings around when someone yells his name, sharp and cut through with alarm. I follow his gaze and we both see Brianne running down the dirt track from the shop towards us. She’s gasping for breath by the time she draws close, visibly distressed.

‘Cam,’ she rasps, red-eyed. ‘It’s Raff. Tara went to the pub for her shift and couldn’t get any answer when she knocked.’

My stomach does a sickly dip.

Cam shakes his head because Brianne’s face already tells us the next part of the story.

‘Dolores had the spare key. She went in and found him stone cold in bed.’ Brianne closes her eyes and tears spill from her lashes. ‘He went to sleep and didn’t wake up, the silly old goat.’

‘Oh no,’ I whisper, sitting down heavily on the sea wall, aware my fingers are shaking when I press them against my mouth. Cam holds Brianne as she cries, and I look away when I see he’s in tears too. He steers his wife across to sit beside me on the wall, then sandwiches her between us, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.