I’ve gone down into the village to see Maggie, it reads. Alva is with me. We’ll be back for tea. Then a single kiss, an x slashed across the bottom of the page, instead of a name – because of course he’d know who it was from.
And he kept it. A note like one she must have left a hundred times before. A nothing note. Folded away in his precious Naomhfhuil logs.
My soup has gone cold, but I don’t have the stomach for it any more. Usually I try not to remember that night, but once you decide not to think of a thing, you can’t get away from it.
I uncurl my legs, needle pricks stabbing my soles when I put them to the floor. Once the pain has passed, I hobble to the kitchen and dump the soup back in the pot before crossing to the window. Outside the loch is so calm it’s as though a looking glass has been lain on the ground, reflecting the clear sky above. There’s no sign of life out there at all.
Filling a pan with water, I set about making tea, putting my bread in the oven while the water boils. I wish I had something else to do – more transcribing work, sewing, anything. The kitchen feels too big and my bedroom too full of secrets, so I take my mug to the front stoop, sitting on the thick slab and blowing at the steam. I tell myself I’m not watching for my father.
I check on the chickens and am surprised to find them huddled in their coop instead of out scratching for worms. When I rummage in the straw there are no eggs, and when I head to the goat shed, I find the goat dry too. I wouldn’t have been able to have milk in my porridge this morning, even if I had come out then. It’s that wild cat, scaring away my breakfast. I hope my father catches it soon.
Locking the goat in, I return to the stoop, my attention on the horizon, until the sky turns pink, mauve, then mulberry. When the polar star emerges above me, I go back inside. The cottage smells of fresh bread, like a real home.
It’s just before midnight when I decide enough is enough. He’s been gone for a whole day and night now, and I’ve spent the last three hours watching the clock on the mantelpiece, ears straining towards every sound, heart jumping with every imagined lift of the door latch. I’m never going to sleep feeling like this – I have to do something. I fetch my earasaid and my boots, and go to my father’s study for a weapon, deciding in a fit of rebellion to take the other long gun.
I’ll walk to the sheds and back. Just to see if there’s any sign of him.
The night is clear, and light enough to see, a hundred thousand stars glittering in an indigo sky, the moon a fat, bold sphere that makes me think of Ren, of all things, though I’ve no idea why.
A splash to my right has me whirling on the spot, raising the gun, as my eyes lock on to something moving in the loch. Then I laugh, delighted.
An otter. After all these years, there’s one right there, parallel to the shore.
I watch it dive, its sleek brown body slipping under the water without making a sound. Then it resurfaces, flipping on to its back and scrubbing its face with its paws. My heart lifts. If ever there was an omen things are going to be all right, it’s this.
My step is much lighter as I walk on, eyes tracking the otter until it vanishes into the depths of the loch and doesn’t return.
The joy lasts until I reach the sheds. I didn’t bring a lamp because the long gun needs two hands – it’s a more powerful gun – but I regret it now. A flintlock pistol would have meant I could have had both weapon and light.
“Da?” I call softly, moving from shed to shed, pushing the doors open and allowing what little light there is to spill inside. I hesitate to go in, suddenly scared the door will close behind me and I’ll be trapped, but force myself to do it anyway, leading with the gun.
“Are you here?” I whisper, both wanting and dreading a reply.
Rats squeal at the intrusion, bold enough in the dark to dart in front of me, but otherwise the sheds are still, the nets hanging dolefully from their hooks, the cart where I left it. If he’s been here, there’s no sign of him now. When I check the boathouses, both boats are there, their hulls bone dry when I pat them.
Defeated, I turn for home, looking to the loch, hoping to see the otter again, watching the whole way back.
The cottage is in sight, the kitchen glowing a welcome at me, when something breaks the surface of the loch again.
But it’s not an otter.
It’s fish-belly pale, and long.
The world falls away as I realize what it is.
A body.
Her body.
Then it moves.
It barely makes a ripple as it swims towards me, slowly cutting through the water with a sinuous grace. And as it dives I see its tail, mottled and grey.
It’s a pike, nothing more.
I laugh with relief, embarrassed by my imagination. I soon sober when I realize it’s a bad sign that pike are coming to the surface. Though I suppose it’s not so much the pike coming to the surface, as much as the surface is closing in on the pike. Even in the dark I can see the level has dropped again. That decides me. I’ll write to Giles myself, I think. He has to know—
Something grabs me from behind.
EIGHT
I drop the gun and scream. Within seconds I’m flung into my own hallway. Miraculously I manage to stay on my feet, stopping myself before I crash into the wall. I turn to find my father standing in the doorway, both long guns over his arm.
He slams the door closed and throws the bolt, leaning against it, breathing heavily.
“Da?”
“What did I tell you?” he says in a low voice.
“I was just—”
“What did I tell you?” he turns and roars, spittle spraying from his lips.
His eyes bulge so wide I see the white around his dark irises, his face purple with fury.
I back away, until I’m against the wall, with nowhere else to go. My knife is in my pocket; my fingertips brush the hilt. Then my father lets out a long, rattling sigh and walks away, into the kitchen.
My head falls back against the wall, my heart making a frantic bid to exit my body directly through my chest, my hand trembling against my hip.
Slowly, I exhale, breathing through my mouth, until everything is steady. When I follow him through to the kitchen, he’s sitting at the table, shovelling cold soup into his mouth straight from the cooking pot. He doesn’t look at me, just eats, spooning soup up with punishing rhythm.
I pull the loaf I made earlier from the breadbox and slice it, depositing thick slabs before him.
He glowers at me over the rim of the pot but accepts the bread.
When he pushes the pot towards me, I take a piece of bread and dip it in the soup. We eat until it’s gone.
The air settles between us, the tension and rage dissipating with the sharing of a meal. Even a cold one.
“Did you see the pike?” I ask.
He stares at me, then nods. I wait for him to tell me he’s finally going to tell Giles, so I won’t have to.
“What were you doing out there?” he asks. “I told you to stay in the cottage.”
“Looking for you. You’ve been gone a whole day.”
His eyebrows rise in surprise. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
I shrug, and begin to clear the table.
“Alva?”
I turn, soup pot in hand.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then: “You look so much like your mother.”