Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

‘I was certain someone would come,’ says Inger. ‘I have to say, I’m surprised it’s you.’

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I thought I’d be alone. I’m so glad I’m not. Can I come in?’

The light shining from her cottage window had been the first good moment in a terrible day. Packing, saying goodbye to David, driving for hours in heavy traffic on the last Friday afternoon before Christmas, and then arriving at Allcombe and having to find a fisherman to take me over to the island as heavy drizzle blanketed the Bristol Channel: I had done all of these things, all the while thinking that an empty island would await me. I expected to sleep that night in my ancient threadbare sleeping bag from university. But in the shroud of late afternoon, the lights of the staff cottage had sung out to me. I had no hesitation in making for it.

Inger says, ‘Yes, come in, come in. I’m sorry, I’ve not seen many people for a while.’ She steps back and I enter. The heat hits me. It’s cosy inside, a tiny living space leading into a kitchen, much smaller than the guest bungalows. There’s a squashy white sofa, anglepoise lamps, and patchwork covers on the cushions. There is a pot-bellied stove in the hearth from which warmth is emanating at a ferocious rate. I put down my rucksack and strip off my coat, then my jumper.

Inger closes the door, and says, ‘I don’t really understand anything that happened. You’re Mrs Makepeace’s daughter, have I got that right? So that means you must own this island now?’

‘Yes, I, um, own it. I’m sorry, do you think I could have a coffee?’

‘Yes, all right.’ I follow her into the kitchen. She’s dressed in a grey tracksuit, her blonde hair scraped back. I watch her fill the kettle with water from the tap. ‘Nearly everyone left. There was no word about reopening, or getting paid…’

‘Do you have contact numbers for staff?’

‘They will be in the reception office. Why? Do you need to talk to them?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

Inger takes two mugs from an overhead cupboard and spoons in instant coffee. I can see she’s thinking hard. ‘I hope you decide to open the island again. I think it would be a good thing to do.’

‘Why did you stay? Even without pay?’

‘I was hoping that the island – what it stands for – could be salvaged. I’d like to help with that.’

‘Another thing that needs saving from drowning?’ I ask her. She smiles, and the kettle clicks off as the water boils for a furious few moments, then settles back down into stillness.

There are a hundred empty beds to choose from on this island, but I am glad to be on Inger’s sofa, listening to the crackle of the fire in the belly of the stove, feeling my body relax into sleep.

Inger has put up no Christmas decorations, and that is another thing I am grateful for. It reinforces my belief that this island is separate from normality, kept free of the usual demands that life places upon us. It is suspended in salt solution, an embalmed island in time, and the fight to keep it preserved in this manner is about to begin.

I wonder if David is alone in bed tonight. I hope so. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I want him to spend at least one night missing me before he turns back to Sam for comfort. For some reason I’m certain that he will; it was a promise in his face when he talked of her. There is unfinished business to be taken care of between them, I think.

Since I’ve given up all rights to him, I shouldn’t mind. But I do. I do. So I allow myself to feel grief and guilt for a few minutes, safe in the knowledge that Inger won’t come down to ask what’s wrong, even if she hears me. She’s not that type of woman, not like Rebecca. Rebecca’s interest lay in examining problems, and Inger is interested in solving them single-handed. If she can’t do that, then she doesn’t want to acknowledge the problem in the first place.

But who am I to criticise her, or Rebecca, after all the things I’ve done? I wallow in self-loathing for a moment, like a pig in mud, and then I tell myself that I no longer have the luxury of hating myself because I have to be better than that. I have so much to do, and I don’t even know where to begin.

I am terrified. The basement will be excavated – I’ve paid a fortune for female workers to come here, claiming it’s in the spirit of the island, and I might find Moira waiting for me under the earth. If not, if she somehow escaped, as I suspect she did, then where do I look for her? How do I catch her when I know what she could do to me? She dismembers, she destroys. She is a monster.

Perhaps it’s easier to be a man. If I’d been born a hero, I would have no doubts now. But I’m weak, and scared, and still a victim.

But I’m also a survivor. It is a thought that comforts me and moves me towards sleep, further down, until I close my eyes and leave all the unanswerable questions until the morning.

‘What are we looking for?’ says Inger.

‘Not sure. Invoices. Receipts. Letters. Personal documents. Anything.’

I wish I was better at coming up with ideas. It was Inger who pointed out that maybe all the paperwork hadn’t been kept at the white house, and maybe we should look at our immediate surroundings. To do something manual, to throw around paper rather than merely ideas, is a relief, even if we’re only finding thank you notes from past visitors, and ferry timetables stretching back to 1978.

‘What’s in that one?’ I ask Inger. We are sitting cross-legged, facing each other, on the floor of the back office. A stack of documents from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet sits between us. She’s holding a vinyl ring folder that looks a lot more exciting than the weather print-outs from the Meteorological Office that I’m examining.

‘Receipts from the mainland for fresh fruit,’ she says. ‘I have a new understanding of how many pears we all ate last year.’ She puts down the folder and stretches, raising her arms above her head as she yawns. I catch her yawn, and return it. I’m tired too, even though it’s still early in the afternoon. But I’m not despondent. Even if we don’t find something here, a clue to help me understand this place better, we’ll find it in the remains of the white house, I’m sure. The excavation has been completed; nothing was found, apart from a few intact barrels of water and some lucky declarations that escaped destruction. The white house is now being rebuilt. The basement has been filled in with concrete.

‘Look,’ says Inger. She holds up a few sheets of yellow paper, stapled in the top left corner. ‘It was underneath the receipts. It doesn’t have a red file, but it looks complete.’

It’s a declaration. I recognise that type of paper, and the letterhead. It should have been lost with the other hundreds, thousands, of declarations that Vanessa kept in the library. I can see the loops and lines of a neat, sure hand, setting out a life story in black.

‘What does it say?’

Inger purses her lips, then reads aloud, ‘“I’m not going to give her a second helping. She takes all of my time and energy as it is. Instead I’m going to keep this all to myself. It’s the story of how I came here, and why I stayed. My very own—”’ She stops reading. ‘It’s a proper declaration. It’s private.’

‘It’s Vanessa’s declaration.’

‘Yes, I think so. The handwriting…’ Inger looks up at me with her steady eyes. ‘Do you think we should destroy it?’

‘Destroy it?’

‘Declarations weren’t written to be read.’

That’s true. The authors never dreamed that their words would be read aloud in order to feed a monster, but that is what happened. And I know that, no matter what the reason behind my mother’s decision to record her past, she wouldn’t want me to read it. But I don’t really care whether she’d hate it or not.