Peter May - Entry Island

But Sime ignored him, pushing open the swing door out to reception and startling the night porter, before slamming through the front doors and out into the cold and dark.

He was halfway across the car park, walking blindly into the night, before Blanc caught his arm and forced him to stop. He turned to be confronted by the alarm and incomprehension in Blanc’s eyes, facing him with his own wild stare of what must have seemed like madness.

‘Are you insane, Sime!’ It wasn’t so much a question as a statement. ‘Have you any idea what you just did? Crozes is a senior officer, and you’ve just beaten the crap out of him.’

‘He’s also been sleeping with my wife for God knows how long.’ Sime had no idea what reaction he expected from Blanc, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the embarrassment he saw. His co-interrogator seemed at a loss for words. And the truth dawned on Sime with a sickening sense of humiliation. ‘You knew.’

Blanc looked at the ground as Sime pulled his arm free of his grasp. His discomfort was acute.

‘Which means everyone knew, right?’

Blanc managed to meet his gaze for just a moment before his eyes flickered away again.

‘But no one thought to tell me.’

Blanc sucked in a deep breath. ‘We thought we were doing you a favour, Sime, protecting you. Really.’ There was a plea for understanding in his eyes.

Sime glared at him with anger and dislike. ‘Fuck you,’ he said quietly. ‘Fuck you all.’ And he turned and strode off into the dark.

The harbour was dominated at its south side by a large rock that towered over the quays. A wooden staircase zigzagged its way up to a viewpoint at the top. Sime stood there, fully exposed to the wind, having made the long slow climb with leaden legs. He had walked aimlessly in an almost trancelike state during all the hours of the night, before pitching up at the harbour. There he had stood at the water’s edge staring out across the bay towards Entry Island. Somehow he always seemed drawn back to it. Only a handful of lights twinkled faintly in the distance to betray its presence in darkness.

Now he stood clutching the wooden rail on the viewpoint, braced against the wind that powered out of the south-west. He saw the lights of the islands spread out below him, stretching away to north and south. He knew that sunrise was not far away, and for the first time fully understood the saying that the darkest hour comes just before the dawn.

While walking blindly through the night he had forced himself to think about nothing, entering a nearly zen-like state in which he had allowed none of the events of the last few days to impinge on his consciousness. Only now, overtaken by total exhaustion, did his resolve crumble, permitting those thoughts to flood his brain.

He replayed his life of the last few months in an endless loop, picking up for the first time on all the little details he had missed. The tell-tale signs he had ignored, consciously or otherwise. It seemed to him, looking back, that Marie-Ange and Crozes must have been having an affair for well over a year. She had converted her guilt into an anger that allowed her to blame him. Her infidelity had become his fault. If she had been forced into the arms of a lover, Sime was to blame. It explained so much. How affection had turned to contempt, intimacy to impatience and then anger.

And somehow he understood, for the first time since she had left, what it was he felt. Grief. For the lover he had lost. Almost as if she had died. Except that the body was still there. Walking, talking, taunting, tormenting him.

He clutched the rail, holding himself steady, his body rigid with tension, and he was caught almost unawares by the trickle of hot tears that ran down his cheeks.

It was still dark when he got back to the hotel. The long, low, two-storey building lay silently beneath the yellow glow of the streetlights. There was no hint of the drama which had played itself out there just a few hours before. Sime wondered how many of the team were asleep, what whispered words had passed between them in rooms and corridors. But found that he didn’t really care any more. The acute sense of humiliation had passed, leaving him empty of emotion, and indifferent to the opinions of others.

The night porter gazed at him from behind the reception desk with a surreptitious curiosity. In his room, the tele-shopping channel was selling an exercise machine to provide a whole-body workout. Sime locked all the doors and turned the TV off. He kicked away his shoes and slipped between the sheets still fully dressed. It was just after 5.30 a.m., and he lay shivering until gradually he started to recover some heat. A slow-burn warmth began to seep through his limbs, permeating his thoughts. He felt his body go limp, the red glow of the digital display on the clock fading to black as lids like lead closed on aching eyes...

The notices of eviction arrived just days after my father’s funeral, but none of us has any intention of leaving.

I feel the wind in my face, cooling my sweat as I toil over this stubborn ground. It is not cold, but the summer sky is laden with rain, and the stiffening of the breeze tells me it won’t be long in releasing it. I have a spade in my hands, digging stones out from beneath my feet, trying to make something arable out of this wilderness. The soil here is thin and sandy and full of stones. But if we are to survive this cursed famine then we need to grow more food.

I look up from my labours and catch sight of Ciorstaidh running down the hill towards me. She is pink-faced and breathless, and I am pleased to see her until she gets close and I catch the look on her face.

When she reaches me she takes several moments to recover her breath. ‘They’re coming,’ she gasps.

‘Who?’

She is still having troubling finding her voice. ‘The Sheriff-Depute and about thirty constables. And a band of men from the estate led by George. They’ve all been drinking ale at the castle to fortify themselves.’

I close my eyes and in the darkness can feel the end of everything I have known just a breath away.

‘You have to persuade the villagers to leave.’

I open my eyes and shake my head slowly. ‘They won’t.’

‘They must!’

‘This is their home, Ciorstaidh. They won’t leave it. To a man, woman and child, we were born here. Our parents and their parents, and theirs before them. Our ancestors are buried here. There can be no question of leaving.’

‘Simon, please.’ Her voice is pleading. ‘There’s no way you’ll win. The constables are armed with batons and carrying irons. And whether it’s right or wrong, they have the law on their side.’

‘Damn the law!’ I shout.

She flinches, and I see the hurt in her eyes and regret raising my voice.

She finds control from somewhere and drops her own voice to a whisper. ‘The sailing ship Heather dropped anchor this morning in Loch Glas. No matter what kind of resistance you put up, they mean to clear Baile Mhanais and put everyone aboard her.’ She pauses. ‘Please, Simon. At least try and persuade your family to leave before they get here.’

I shake my head, full of foreboding. ‘My mother’s more stubborn than any of them. And if she won’t go, then I won’t either.’

She stares at me as if trying to formulate words that will make me change my mind. Before suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she bursts into tears. I am torn between my confusion, and an urge to protect her. I step up the slope to take her in my arms. The sobs that rack her body vibrate through mine. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she says.

I slide my fingers through her hair and feel the smallness of her skull in the palm of my hand. ‘Don’t be silly. None of this is your fault. You can’t be held responsible for the actions of your father.’