The Lighthouse Witches(15)

Luna and Clover were already outside when I emerged from the lighthouse, playing tag and laughing. I started to tell them off for leaving the bothy when they’d been instructed to stay indoors, but they were laughing so hard my words died in the wind.

At lunchtime, the old Range Rover that I recognized as Isla’s pulled up outside. Through the window I saw a cloud of blonde hair emerge from the passenger side. Saffy, followed by another girl.

I ran outside, unable to stop myself from bursting into tears and throwing my arms around her. Luna, Clover, and I had scoured the area around the lighthouse, searching the caves dotting the cliffs farther along the bay. We’d gone into the forest, then drove into the little town, Strallaig, in case she’d made it that far, but there had been no sign of her. I’d told myself that if she didn’t turn up by two o’clock, I’d call the police. It was half past one.

Saffy tolerated my hug—I guessed because we had an audience—and I thanked Isla for finding her. There was a man in the driving seat. An older man, mid-sixties, with a stone-cold stare.

“This is my husband, Bram,” Isla said.

“Hello,” I said. He didn’t smile or say hello back, but I wasn’t bothered. I was just grateful to have Saffy home.

“Where was she?” I asked.

“We spotted her walking along Salters Road, about a mile that way,” she said, turning to point left. “We’ve just stopped by the café for a cuppa, haven’t we, girls?”

The other girl, Rowan, introduced herself as Isla’s daughter. At fifteen, she was the same age as Saffy, and just as shy and awkward, but she was friendly with it, too. She had long hair dyed raven black—an inch of copper roots betrayed her true color—and heavy black eye makeup. An oversized Marilyn Manson T-shirt and studded Doc Martens indicated that she was somewhat of a goth. I invited her and Isla in for a coffee.

“Oh, we’ve just been to Mum’s café,” Rowan said. She laughed nervously when she spoke, a light tinkle of bells.

“Whist,” Isla said, which I remembered meant “be quiet.” Then, to me: “We’d love to, but I’ve to open the café for a crafts workshop.”

She explained that “the café” was her café in the town of Strallaig. She ran it while looking after properties, like the Longing, on the side.

“Another time, then,” I said.

She nodded. “Oh, before I forget—I’ve ordered all the things you asked for. The paints, the harnesses, brushes, extension poles, a thirty-meter cherry picker. They’ll take another week or so to arrive, but they’re on their way.”

I was astonished. “You found a cherry picker?”

“The thingamajig that looks like a fireman’s lift?”

“Yes.”

“Aye. Took a bit of finding, that, but I got it. And I’ve got a plasterer coming out to sort out all the bits of the interior wall that need fixing.”

I told her I owed her. “Not at all,” she said brightly. Then, turning to get back into her car, she added, “Why don’t you come over one night? Bring the girls.” She winked. “We can have that coffee with a dram of whiskey.”


IV

I registered the girls at the local school, a small joined-up primary-through-secondary school with a hundred kids. It was very relaxed, with a lot of focus on the outdoors, and I tried not to think about where I would register them once I finished the mural.

I decided to keep the girls at home for a week longer so we could spend some time together before I started work, and specifically to try to get myself back into Saffy’s good graces. The weather played nice for us, those grim scenes of lashing waves and witchy trees we’d been met with on our first night ripening to lush vistas of emerald fields, golden beaches, and rich blue ocean. The wildlife, too, was something else—we came to recognize the seals that seemed to reside on the rocks behind the Longing, the big gray one who shuffled and grunted in response when Clover called hello to him each morning, and the two slim black ones who often played together in the water, slick and quick as missiles.

“Sharks!” Luna shouted one morning. I raced outside to find her pointing at a dorsal fin moving slowly through the water, only twenty feet or so from where we stood. A fishing boat was nearby, and I saw a man leaning over the side, sliding a pole into the water. The dorsal fin turned and began heading toward him. Clover clapped a hand to her mouth.

“The sharks are going to eat him!” she squealed.

The man was shouting something.

“What did he say?” Luna said.

“It’s Basil,” he said, waving his arm at us. “Basil!”

“Basil?” I called back.

“Oh, the basking shark,” Luna said. “Remember? Isla told us about him when we arrived.”

We watched, speechless, as the shark lifted its snout out of the water to the fisherman’s pole. And instead of feeding it, the fisherman used the pole to rub up and down the shark’s body.

“He likes a good scratch,” the man shouted.

And every morning after that, a similar scene—the fisherman, whose name we learned was Angus McPherson, stopped off at the bay on his way back from his morning catch to say hello to Basil, our friendly neighborhood basking shark.

We visited Camhanaich, the ancient standing stones set in a circle, which, according to Saffy, was likely used by Neolithic settlers for ritualistic slaughter. We drove through a sea fret, which was like driving through milk, and watched coal-black storm clouds roll in like traveling mountains. We explored the forests, spotted otters and kingfishers by the rivers, and the clock-round face of an owl in flight. We picked wildflower bouquets and took them back to the bothy, identifying each plant using an old encyclopedia of Scottish flowers: fair-grass, fool’s parsley, bog myrtle, hop-clover. We dried and hung them from the windows of the bothy.