Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

‘What will happen now?’

That’s a question I can’t answer. This is what I thought I wanted – a level playing field. But now I have it, the length and breadth of it, stretching away from me in all directions, it is terrifying. No protectors any more for us women. It’s nobody’s duty to keep us safe.

He steps back, and moves to the row of windows in my tower, overlooking the lay of the island: the swimming pool, the reception building, the rows of bungalows. It is a miniature town from up here, toy buildings and felt carpet fields. Spring is coming, and the sun shines upon it with the fervour of a blessing. I will spend a lot of time up here, enjoying it, what it gives to me. It means something important to own such a place.

‘I’m reopening it as a centre,’ I tell him. ‘A place for a week out, to learn about yourself, to reflect. To make friends. Write a declaration. But not only for women. For anyone who needs time away from being what they think they’re meant to be.’ I will read these new declarations aloud to Moira, and she will appreciate stories of all kinds, about many things. There are so many stories in the world.

‘If it’s a place for new stories then I don’t belong here. My story is done, isn’t it?’ He turns back to me, and in his face I see something horrible, that wounds me more than I ever thought it could; I see relief. He is glad to have an excuse not to stay.

‘You’ll go back to Bassett?’

‘That’s where I belong.’

‘Do you think Arnie will be there?’

David hesitates, then shakes his head. ‘I don’t think he’s coming back.’

I have to agree. Is Arnie dead, like poor Geoff, whom I persuaded into the cave in order to save David? I don’t know. I didn’t think losing Arnie would be any great loss, but it is, it is. I am fatherless for the first time. All of my men are being stripped from me, and it is a horrible feeling.

Arnie cannot watch over me, and I have emasculated David.

He is free of the need to protect me.

Suddenly I realise what he will do. ‘You’ll go back to Sam.’

He doesn’t reply.

I don’t want to be alone, like Moira. For the first time I understand how much she must hate being alone.

‘Sam needs me. I can’t explain it.’

I look into Moira’s face once more. It is unchanged.

So that’s the way it is .

‘I’ll stay tonight, if that’s okay. Have you got space for me?’

‘Yes, of course.’ I can’t imagine touching him ever again. ‘In one of the guest bungalows. Reception will set you up with whatever you need.’ I want him to get out, to get out, out, out. I want to hit him, cry, rage, break open the statue and make Moira turn him back into my hero.

He frowns, crosses to the door, and descends from my tower. Time passes in slow increments and realisations. I am alone.

I am loveless. I have only myself to blame. And, right at the moment when I thought the danger had passed, I need to find new reserves of strength. I must get through this abandonment, and so must all other women, all over the world.

There’s a knock at the door. Rebecca and Inger enter, come to stand beside me, and look at Moira with expressions of fear and fascination.

‘We’re sorry,’ says Inger. ‘About going behind your back. But we knew you couldn’t do it alone.’

‘And we were right, weren’t we?’ Rebecca chimes in. She does so love to be right.

Inger looks very young today. Her skin shines; her lips are full and pink.

Rebecca looks much older. She has stopped applying henna to her hair, and only the bottom third of her curls are red. The rest is a dirty grey, and it makes the yellowing skin around her mouth and neck so much more obvious.

I put my arms around them, one on each side, and I think that we are like sisters in this endeavour: Inger the brave, Marianne the manipulative, Rebecca the cynic. We share a vision of a future, and we will work towards it.

‘So how do we do it?’ says Inger. ‘Do we accept everyone at this island, and hope they’ll all get along somehow? How can we show people everywhere that the world has changed? That they can tell new kinds of stories?’

How many stories are there that we can tell? When I think about my own past, couldn’t I be the hero, the victim, the sidekick, the sage, even the villain, all at the same time? Is it really up to me to decide which part of my history defines me?

I look into the eyes of the statue, then at the faces of my sisters, and I tell them the truth.

I have absolutely no idea.

David pulled up outside her house, and found her sitting on the doorstep, in the sunlight, enjoying the first warm day of the year. She held knitting needles in her hands. A ball of blue wool bobbed between her feet.

He got out of the car, and walked over to her. She didn’t get up. Instead she stopped knitting, smiled up at him and said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

He sat beside her on the doorstep and said, ‘I’m here now.’ Sam nodded.

There was no need to speak, to explain. He watched her knit, the deftness of her fingers, the twists and turns of the wool. From inside the house floated music, orchestral, swelling strings.

‘What are you making?’

‘A scarf. For you.’

‘But spring’s coming.’

‘I know, but it’s the only thing I can knit.’ Sam held it up. It was already long, and fat, haphazard, messy, with stitches dropped. ‘Do you like it?’

‘I love it,’ he said.

She made a small sound of satisfaction, and carried on knitting.

‘This smoke is disgusting.’

I’m washed in cold morning air as Dave sits up, taking the duvet with him, but I try to cling to sleep regardless. I won’t be beaten that easily. ‘Ignore him,’ I mumble.

‘I’m going home.’

‘He’s not, he doesn’t…’ But Dave is up and putting on yesterday’s clothes at speed. He’s gone in no time at all.

At least I have the duvet again.

There’s a dry chuckle beside my ear.

My house-ghost is laughing at his destruction of yet another of my relationships. No matter what preparatory work I put in, my boyfriends never last the night. The problem isn’t the night itself but the dawn, when their eyelids flutter open and they breathe in that chewy smoke. The smell of an old man luxuriating in his cigar habit.

‘Screw you,’ I tell the ghost, and settle back down to sleep.

Min, I can’t go on like this. Do something .

‘Do what?’ I tell the back of the receipt for croissants – bought specially for a romantic lie-in this morning – on which Dave has written his ultimatum. He’s gone from understanding, even indulgent, to accusatory. Apparently I’m to blame. When I first told him a ghost visits me early every morning, he laughed. The reality of sharing space, either with the ghost or with me, turned out to be different from whatever he was picturing.

I sit down at the kitchen table and fold the receipt many times until it’s as small as I can make it, and then flick it in the direction of the bin. I pick up a pen and grab an old envelope from the mail pile. I start to write what I can’t say.

Dave –

A different woman might mind that you’re leaving me to face this ongoing issue alone, but the truth is I’m not alone. Not since the ghost came into my life. He found me in my first flat. Or perhaps I should say I found him. I’d been living in a hall of residence for my first year at university, and then all the people I’d asked to share a house with me in the second year decided they’d rather share between themselves, due to a misunderstanding over who owned certain things in the fridge, and they moved into the house I’d found without me. I was alone, and low on choices. I ended up in the only place still available at short notice at a decent rent, and that was the flat above the fish and chip shop .