Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

I can’t help it. I laugh. She laughs too, the guilty sound of survival, and we don’t stop until David and Hamish come into the conservatory and stand beside us in a flanking manoeuvre.

‘We really should get on the road,’ says Hamish. He’s aged less well than Rebecca, a wiry, pale white-blond with a slight physique and very blue eyes. Beside him Rebecca looks more vital. ‘It’s a long drive back.’

‘Yes,’ she says, meekly.

‘I suppose we should as well,’ I say, and David nods. How handsome he is in his dark suit. How glad I am that he’s beside me, so that I don’t have to face these conversations alone.

Hamish says, ‘Great to chat with you,’ to David, and David replies, ‘You’ve got my email?’

‘Yes.’ Hamish pats his breast pocket, where I assume he keeps his phone. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

‘We should all say goodbye to Kay’s mother,’ says David. ‘She’s done a wonderful job here. Maybe we should check if she needs a hand tidying up.’ We all agree, and David turns to look for the poor mother, the right words no doubt already forming on his lips, taking the sting out of the situation for us all.

David and I travel home in silence. It’s not a strained silence. It’s comfortable, companionable. We are so pleased to have weathered these two funerals, and we are looking forward to recommencing our old life.

He’s driving. With the radio on soft jazz and the night already upon us, I remember the trip to the police station. That night feels so very long ago.

As we get closer to our junction on the M4, David takes one hand from the steering wheel and clicks off the radio.

‘How are you?’ he asks.

‘Good.’

‘Me too.’

‘Good. I’m glad.’

I think we can do this. I can go back to work in the library. They’ve rearranged the shift patterns so that nobody is ever left alone to lock up. I can work there, and look forward to a takeaway on a Friday night, and maybe I can give David children because there’s no doubt that he’ll make a wonderful father. We can be content, our family, in the knowledge that we’ve had our adventure and no more shocks await us.

‘What was Kay like?’ he says. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘She didn’t want to live for other people. She was taller than me, and she walked really quickly. She wasn’t keen on Italian food.’ It’s an odd list, and it includes everything I know about her. Suddenly I feel the movement of time, a jolt, like riding a galloping horse towards a fence, far in the distance, and realising that the jump is coming, coming, is so very nearly upon me.

We are home. David reverse-parks the car and then we get out, to a darkened house warmed through by the silent, pumping radiators. The neighbours have their Christmas decorations up, multicoloured lights strung around the small, bare cherry tree they keep in the middle of their front lawn. Already we have moved on. My mind turns to presents, and food, and the beginning of a new year. I want to get something special for David. I can’t think of anything that would do. Clothes, music, films: all too mundane. If he were a woman and I were a man, I’d buy him a ring. An eternity ring, worth a month’s wages at least, to seal the deal.

I follow him into the living room and watch him draw the curtains. Then he sits on the sofa and I sit next to him, side by side, our coats and shoes still on. He pulls me into his lap, and I kick off my shoes and relax into him. We are wrapped together in our womb of a house, and the certainty hits me that this is not the beginning of our happily ever after. We will have to grow up soon, up and apart, and face the truth about the divergent paths of our lives. I have things I have to do, mysteries that still need to be solved. I push that unwelcome revelation away and sigh into his neck.

‘While you were away I met someone who said she knew you,’ he says. ‘She’s a Community Support Officer.’

‘How did you meet her?’

‘Outside the library.’

‘What were you…?’ I didn’t finish the question. I’m certain I’d rather not hear the things he’s trying to tell me.

‘He started all of this, you know that, don’t you?’ says David. ‘He would have—’

The words spring out of me. ‘Raped me. Burned me. Hurt me. Used me. Killed me. Fucked me. Cut me.’

‘Stop.’

‘I’m here with you. I’m fine. You need to let it go,’ I tell him.

‘Sam – the woman I met – she was desperate to catch this man, to stop him from hurting others. And you can come out of an attack, an earthquake, a meeting with the mother who abandoned you, her death, and you think you can simply let it all go?’

‘Not me,’ I tell him. ‘I can’t let it go. You can.’

He is quiet for a moment. Then he says, ‘I think I need you to accept that when things happen to you, they happen to me too. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but they do happen to me too.’

‘Yes. All right. I can see that.’ I move from his lap to the other side of the sofa. ‘So tell me. Tell me what you went through.’

‘It’s not a competition, Marianne.’

‘Then why do I feel like I’ve got a rival? This woman – Sam – who wants to be a heroine. Do you prefer that? What is she trying to prove?’

David crosses his legs. ‘I’m not interested in what she’s trying to prove.’

‘I don’t think that’s true.’

My body has become used to the heat of the house; I’m no longer warm. I take the throw from the back of the sofa and wrap it around my legs.

‘I think you need help,’ says David. He leans over and puts a hand on my thigh. ‘To talk this out with someone. Not just the library thing, but the thing with your mother as well. And I need the same, maybe. There’s too much to take on. So much has happened, so fast. There’s so much you’re not telling me.’

‘Can’t we just not talk about it? I think if we just…’ I make a smooth line with the flat of my hand, like a journey on calm seas.

‘Do you think that’ll work forever?’

‘It’ll work tonight. Tomorrow night. Maybe all the way to Christmas. That’s what I want. A happy Christmas. Can we have that? Please?’

‘And then?’ David takes his hand away and stands up. ‘Will you be ready to deal with it after that? If we do this entirely on your terms, because it seems that’s how everything has to be?’

His words, and the pain behind them, hurt me deeply. He’s right, then – we are interlinked. We have grown together, and any time those strands get pulled there is a twinge, a soreness, to the movement. ‘I’m selfish. Yes, I know it, and I’m so sorry. I can’t blame you for anything that happened while I was away, and I won’t. I won’t, as long as I don’t have to talk about it. Don’t tell me any more about your friend, or how you met her. All that matters right now is that you came for me. Everything else can wait. Because we love each other, it can wait. Right?’

He nods, and says, ‘Cuppa?’

‘Lovely.’

Normality is restored so easily. He wanders off to the kitchen, shedding his coat, and our love is a given once more.

Time passed for David in a slow haze. The bubble of life with Marianne protected him from the worst – and best – of his emotions. They both returned to work. She resumed library duties and he went back and forth to his office with no real understanding of what he was doing. He couldn’t remember the conversations he had there, or the daily commutes in the car. It seemed beyond trivial to him. If he had gone on making no effort and taking no interest at work, he was certain he would have lost his job, but in the final few days before Christmas it seemed that nobody was concentrating on such things.