Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

‘Oh, my God!’ Seonag reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I don’t know, I just thought... given that it was murder, they would have held on to the body.’

Niamh shrugged. ‘They carried out some kind of post-mortem. Presumably they took the samples they needed. Tissue. Blood.’ She paused a moment to collect herself. It was not easy to talk about such things as if they were the subject of everyday conversation. ‘But I’m glad they let him go so quickly. I can’t even start the process of closure or recovery until I’ve buried him.’ And despite her best efforts the tears came again. She looked at her friend through the blur that filled her eyes. ‘But to be honest, Seonag, I’m...’ She searched for the right word. ‘Broken. I’m not sure I can ever get past this.’

Seonag squeezed her hand again. ‘You will, Niamh. You were always the strong one.’

‘I don’t feel very strong.’

‘But you are. Remember that time we were all driving back from a dance at Bragar and we hit a rabbit on the road. Stupid bloody thing just froze in the headlights. And you were the one that insisted we stop the car and make sure it was dead. And then when it wasn’t, and everyone was turning away, even the boys, you were the one to break its neck and put it out of its misery. There was no one else in the car that night who had the guts to do that.’

‘I wish I had the guts to put myself out of my own misery.’

‘Oh, Niamh, don’t talk like that, for Heaven’s sake.’ Seonag gazed at her with earnest concern. ‘We’ll all get through this. Together.’

And Niamh wondered who all these people were who had to get through it. Right now it felt like she was the only one suffering. But then she knew his parents, too, would be devastated by the loss of their son. And how thick Seonag was with Ruairidh’s mother.

Seonag took a mouthful of wine and slipped off the stool. ‘Right, now I’m going to make dinner. Lasagne.’ She smiled. ‘Well, I’m cheating a little. I made it earlier. All I have to do is heat it up in the oven. But I’ll make a salad to go with it.’ She nodded towards the door. ‘I’ll just get the stuff in from the car.’

When Seonag had gone, Niamh wondered if she really wanted her here at all. She had intended to spend this last night alone with Ruairidh. But maybe that would just have been mawkish, indulgent, wallowing in self-pity. Although she knew from bitter experience there were times when you simply had to let grief run its course.

Seonag prepared dinner and served up piping-hot lasagne with fresh salad smothered in a honey and mustard dressing. They sat at the table in the well of the room, looking out at the sea below, and Seonag polished off the better part of a bottle of Chianti as they ate their pasta. It wouldn’t start to get dark for an hour or two yet. As autumn progressed towards winter, and the sun began to slip below the equator, the days would quickly shorten, and the long dark nights that lay ahead filled Niamh with dread.

Miraculously the sky had cleared now. All that low-lying cloud dispersed by the wind and blown off to the mainland. The mountains of Sutherland were clearly visible, purple rising to pink in the reflected light of the sunset far to the west.

When they had eaten, Niamh and Seonag donned wellies and warm jackets, and went walking out from the house, around a gully that fell away steeply to a tiny rocky inlet two hundred feet below. Beyond it lay the headland where John Nicolson’s house stood in silhouette against the sky.

‘They say it’s haunted,’ Niamh said.

‘Who by?’

‘A young girl called Annie Campbell. She fell to her death from the cliffs while collecting grass for her cow. The best grass was closest to the edge, and apparently she thought it was too dangerous for the cow.’

‘Have you ever seen her?’

Niamh laughed, and realized it was the first time she had done so since Ruairidh’s death. Her smile faded quickly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve never believed in that kind of thing. It seems a young man also fell from the cliffs while collecting eggs.’ She pointed. ‘There’s a gravestone over there, near the remains of that old blackhouse beyond Taigh ’an Fiosaich. But it’s unmarked.’

Seonag said, ‘Remember that time when we were kids? And we stole all the eggs from Mrs Macdonald’s henhouse? Meaning to give them back, of course. But only after the old cailleach had found the henhouse empty. And then you slipped and dropped the basket and broke every single egg.’

Niamh laughed in spite of herself. ‘We got into so much trouble.’

Seonag slipped her arm through Niamh’s, and they walked in silence for some minutes along the cliff edge. Gannets and shags wheeled and swooped about their heads, cawing and shrieking in the soft evening air. Others were settling themselves for the night in nests they had contrived on impossible crags and ledges above the sheerest of drops. Far off to the west, the sky glowed gold along the horizon, rising through pink and purple to the darkest blue. There was every likelihood that the aurora borealis would put on a show tonight. Niamh breathed deeply and closed her eyes. She loved this place. But she didn’t know if she could stay here without Ruairidh.

She opened her eyes to find Seonag looking at her. Seonag said, ‘I’ve got an overnight bag in the car. Martin is happy to look after the kids. I thought you could do with the company.’

Niamh gazed out across the Minch and wondered if, beyond her need for sympathy and comfort, Seonag was really who she wanted to be with tonight.

Seonag and I had been inseparable as kids, but something changed between us the minute I’d shown an interest in Ruairidh. And it was a while before I figured out that she was after him herself.

It wasn’t obvious at first. I’d thought that maybe she was just jealous, afraid of losing me to some boy. After all, at that age girls and boys kept themselves pretty much to themselves. The hormones hadn’t started playing havoc with our emotions just yet.

But now that we were into our teens things were a little different. Ruairidh was fifteen and had already gone to the Nicolson where, by all accounts, he was the school heart-throb. I was frustrated to be stuck, still, at Shawbost.

Gone was his mullet, replaced by a Rick Astley haircut, short back and sides with a thick quiff on top. He was still tall, but had filled out by now, and was playing for the school rugby team. He had acquired a leather bomber jacket from the army surplus store in Stornoway, which he wore to death, along with drainpipe jeans with the knees out. He was the epitome of cool.

I had sprouted, too, and was taller than Seonag, and very proud of my budding breasts. My figure was still a bit too skinny and boyish for my liking, but there was a sense now of womanhood just around the corner. Clothes hung well on me, and I had let my blonde curls grow long, tying them back at times in a ponytail that hung halfway down my back, at other times leaving them to cascade freely over my shoulders.

Seonag, to my annoyance, grew even more beautiful as we passed into our teens. She had one of those classic hourglass figures, with boobs that drew every boy’s eye, and a face that might easily have launched a thousand ships. Only on Lewis, they would have been fishing boats or trawlers, and the fishermen would have been interested in more than her face. She still looked much older than me, and although I was more confident within myself these days, in her company I definitely felt like the frumpy friend.

Her plan to take Ruairidh away from me — although it has to be said that he was a long way from ever being mine — began with a process of running him down. Trying to diminish him in my eyes with a litany of half-truths and downright lies. Had I heard about him getting drunk in Stornoway and being driven home by the police in disgrace? Did I know that he was going out with the captain of the hockey team, and had allegedly been caught having sex with her in the locker room? And one time, when he showed up at the youth club with a split lip and two black eyes, she told me confidentially that he’d been in some kind of a fight at school. I later learned that he had acquired his injuries playing rugby against a team from Inverness. Which taught me to take everything Seonag told me about him with a pinch of salt.