Ann Cleeves: Thin Air

When the party ended they couldn’t sleep. Caroline and Lowrie had disappeared back to Lowrie’s parents’ house. Polly, Eleanor and their men had booked a holiday cottage called Sletts within walking distance of the Meoness community hall, and now the four of them sat outside it on white wooden chairs and watched the tide ebb. No background noise except the water and their own murmured conversation. The occasional echoing splash of wine being poured into large glasses. Polly felt the dizziness return and thought again that she’d had far too much to drink. She turned back to face her friends and realized they were in the middle of a conversation.

‘Did you see Lowrie’s cousin’s kiddie?’ The envy in Eleanor’s voice was palpable. ‘Little Vaila. Only four weeks old.’

Eleanor was thirty-six and desperate for a baby. There’d been a late miscarriage, and the child would have been a girl. None of them knew what to say. There was a long silence.

‘I saw something really weird when you were all out for a walk this afternoon,’ Eleanor went on, obviously deciding to change the subject. Perhaps she understood that talk of babies embarrassed them. ‘There was a young girl dancing on the beach. She was all in white. A kind of old-fashioned party dress. She seemed a bit young to be on her own, but when I went out to talk to her she’d disappeared. Into thin air.’

‘What are you saying?’ Her husband Ian’s voice was teasing, but not unkind. ‘You don’t think you saw a ghost?’

Polly didn’t speak. She was remembering the girl she’d seen dancing on the sand.

‘I’m not sure,’ Eleanor said. ‘I could easily believe in ghosts in a place like this. All this history so close to the surface. Some of the research I’ve been doing for Bright Star has been compelling. Really, I think a lot of the people I’ve talked to believed they’ve had a supernatural encounter.’

‘I bet they were all weirdos.’

‘No! Ordinary people who’d had extraordinary experiences.’

‘You’re on holiday now,’ Ian said. ‘You don’t need to think about work, or the company or the new commission. You’ll make yourself ill again. Just relax and let it go.’ The others laughed uneasily, hoping that he’d dealt with the awkwardness and they could enjoy the evening once more.

It occurred to Polly that Ian had only agreed to come to Shetland because she and Marcus would be there. He couldn’t quite face his wife on his own, even though her depression seemed to have lifted a little in the last couple of months. After the miscarriage he’d believed that she was unravelling, that he was losing her. Polly didn’t know if he’d even wanted a baby. Perhaps he just wanted Eleanor back the way she was when they’d first met. Stylish and uncomplicated, full of pranks and larks. Fun.

Eleanor flushed. She’d been drinking since early evening. She worked in television and usually she could hold her booze, but tonight even she seemed a little drunk. ‘Perhaps you think I’m going mad again, that I should be back in the loony bin.’ She stared out at the water. ‘Or perhaps you believe I’m inventing things. To get attention.’

There was another silence. For a moment Polly was tempted to speak, to say that she’d seen a child dressed in white dancing on the beach too, but still she stayed silent. A sort of betrayal.

‘Only when you claim to have seen spirits from the other side.’ Ian was dismissive. He was a sound engineer. A bit of a nerd. He clearly thought the whole conversation was ridiculous and he was feeling awkward, way out of his comfort zone.

It was as dark now as it would get and a mist was rising from the sea to cover the remaining light. Polly shivered. She was wearing a padded jacket, but it was cold. ‘We should go in,’ she said. ‘I’m ready for bed.’

‘You believe me, don’t you, Pol?’ Eleanor had been a beauty when she was a student, in a grown-up, voluptuous way that had made Polly look like a grey, malnourished child. Ian leaned forward and lit a fat white candle on the table. The light flickered and Polly saw lines under her friend’s eyes. Stress and a kind of desperation. She was wearing a theatrical black evening cloak over her bridesmaid’s dress. ‘There was a little girl just outside the house here when I woke up from my sleep this afternoon. When you were all out walking. And then she disappeared. She just seemed to walk into the sea.’

‘Of course I believe you.’ Polly wanted to show her support for Eleanor, to stop her talking about children and embarrassing herself. She paused. ‘I probably saw her myself this evening, when I left the hall to catch my breath just after supper. She was playing out on the beach. I don’t think she was a ghost, though. Just a local child dressed up for the party, and this afternoon she probably ran home up the track.’ Polly didn’t say that the girl she’d seen during the hamefarin’ had also disappeared while she was looking away. That would have encouraged Eleanor in her fancies, and she wanted her friend back too. The closeness they’d had. The laughs and the silliness.

She stood up and carried the glasses into the house. The men followed. She wondered what Marcus was making of all this. He was Polly’s new man – newish at least – and she was still amazed that they were a couple. She felt like a giddy teenager when she thought about him. He’d agreed to the party immediately when she’d tentatively asked if he fancied it. ‘Shetland in midsummer? Of course.’ With the huge schoolboy grin that had attracted her in the first place. ‘And if we’re going north, where better than to go to Unst, the furthest north it’s possible to be and still be in the UK.’ For him, it seemed, life was nothing but new experiences.

Through the kitchen window Polly saw that Eleanor was still sitting outside. The mist had slid as far as the house now and the image was blurred. It was as if Eleanor was made of ice and was slowly melting. Polly went to the door and shouted out to her.

‘Come in, lovely. You’ll catch your death.’

Eleanor waved. ‘Give me a few minutes. I’ll be there very soon.’ She blew out the candle.

Turning to go to her room, Polly thought she caught sight of a white figure dancing along the tideline.

Jimmy Perez walked Cassie down the hill to Ravenswick School. Some days he let her go by herself, but then he watched from the house, picking out the red Fair Isle bonnet knitted by his mother and worn by Cassie whatever the weather, until it disappeared inside. His paranoia was the result of guilt and the fact that Cassie wasn’t his child. He’d been charged to care for her and he felt the duty like an honour and a burden.

He was on late shift, so he walked slowly back to the converted chapel that had once been Fran’s home, and thought again that he should do something with his house in Lerwick. He wasn’t sure that he could bring himself to sell it, and besides he had it in his head that it would provide some sort of security for Cassie if anything should happen to him. Her natural father always seemed to have money, but Perez thought he was feckless. The Lerwick house would see Cassie through university perhaps or give her the deposit for her first home. Properties in town fetched more than those in the country. But it seemed criminal that it should be lying empty when folk needed places to stay and, with nobody living there, it would soon get damp. He decided to call into an estate agency in the street before he started work, to see about getting it rented out. When Fran had died the year before, small tasks like that had seemed insurmountable and he felt a stab of pride that he could consider dealing with the business now.