Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

‘Who knows?’ she says. ‘There are more things on heaven and Earth…’

We are not friends. We’re not going to be friends. It’s not a surprise. She has already been clear that she doesn’t make friends. It’s only a certainty, now, from my point of view.

‘Not good enough,’ I say. ‘We need answers.’

She considers this.

‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘Bring your duvet.’

I’ve never been camping before and I’m not sure this really qualifies. Duvets under the stars, wearing all the clothes I brought with me to keep out the cold that permeates all British nights, regardless of the season. Katie’s grandfather was used to this.

‘What’s this going to prove?’ I ask her.

‘I’ll know it when it comes to me.’ She’s lying close beside me, within touching distance. She picked the spot for us to sleep, after we walked the length of the island, tramping around until she found a place that worked for her. I wonder if she chose it according to her memory of that night; we are in the shadow of a stone wall, and there are sheep in the field beyond. It’s as if she was describing this place all along, in her declaration.

At least a tent would create the illusion of safety, and a little heat. Mingled breath, and the warmth that living bodies give out. Instead there’s only my heightened awareness of the dark, and what it can hide, and the stars overhead don’t seem to light a thing.

‘Do you go camping a lot?’

‘This is my second time,’ she says, dryly.

‘What…’ It strikes me as an insolent question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. ‘What was it about your grandfather that makes you want to emulate some areas of his life but not others? You don’t go camping, you don’t smoke cigars. But you do refuse to get into relationships. Or would you only get into one for a bet?’

‘I’m not emulating him,’ she says. ‘It was only that we understood each other. I realised because of him that it was okay to not like people.’

‘Because you liked him.’

‘Yes,’ she says, as if that wasn’t a contradiction.

‘I don’t understand that.’

I’m putting off attempting to sleep by having this ridiculous conversation, I know it. I don’t want to wake up early tomorrow and find out her truth.

‘Are you in a relationship?’ she asks me, from where she lies.

‘Yeah.’ I try to sound convincing, but my initial pause was too long. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Of course it is.’ I hear smugness in her voice. ‘If it was going well you wouldn’t be here, on this island, would you? Taking advantage of the one visit policy. Using your Get Out of Jail Free card, at least for a week.’

Is that what I’m doing? ‘It’s just a sticky patch.’

‘Have you been in lots of relationships?’

‘The usual amount.’

‘And they all hit sticky patches, and you keep wading through them. See, that. That, I don’t understand.’

I turn over and face away from her.

‘Good night,’ she says, softly, and a little while later she has the temerity to softly snore.

I wake up to clean air.

The sky is a dark, deep blue above me, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I force myself to sit up, gathering the duvet around me, and notice how the sky is changing colour on the horizon. As I watch pale streaks form and collate and turn to glorious orange. It’s dawn.

He’s not here.

I want to call out to him, but it would be a presumption to use the name Katie knows him by. And even if he had that name once, it surely wouldn’t fit him now.

This is what loneliness feels like.

Katie stretches and mutters.

My eyes water and sting. My cheeks are raw.

A chuckle.

I place it. It came from behind me, on the stone wall. He’s sitting on the wall. I swivel and see the cigar smoke, rising up and dissipating to blow out to sea, away from where we lie.

‘Is it you?’ Katie whispers.

Nothing happens.

‘It’s you,’ she says.

He’s here, with me. With us. There can’t be any explanations. How could he tell us about his choices? He’s nothing more than a feeling, a scent, a sound.

‘Why are you here?’ she asks. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’

The sun rises just that little bit further, just enough to clarify, solidify, to a new day.

‘You can’t tell me, can you? You don’t want to.’ She sounds reconciled to her own words, as if she’s hit upon an answer of her own, somehow.

He’s gone.

Katie holds out her hand to me and I take it. We are frozen together. She thinks she’s found him, and I think I’ve lost him, and we’re good and strong in this moment for different reasons that don’t really matter.

The week passes.

Katie and I take classes, and swim, and talk to each other. We talk about her grandfather and my ghost, and the ways they were the same and they were different. We can find no answers between us.

We also talk to many women about their lives, lives that come across as strange and normal at the same time. It’s only a glimpse of what makes us all work. I find I want more.

We take half an hour after dinner every night to work on our declarations.

The last thing I write is:

I wonder what he would have said to me if he could have talked. I think it would have been something like – Min, girl, you’re concentrating on the wrong stuff. It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is that you needed me without knowing it, and now you have to do better than that. You have to want something. What do you want?

This voice I give to him is nothing like the voice he would have had when he was alive, I’m sure.

Sometimes I think about asking Katie to tell me how her declaration ends, but I never do, and she doesn’t offer to read it to me.

Every day I wake up at dawn and every day I breathe in, and listen. I don’t move. All my concentration is on the smell and the sound of the air around me. He’s not there. He’s not there.

I miss him.

I’m ready to go home.

We stand on the dock and watch the boat coming in. It takes its time. The women talk and laugh quietly. We don’t join in but it’s good to be on the periphery, as the silent but accepted members. They don’t know much about us, but what they know is enough.

‘We don’t have to keep in touch,’ I tell her.

‘Good, because I don’t do that stuff,’ she says.

‘No, really?’ I make my shocked face.

‘I’m just reminding you.’

‘That’s very handy, because I nearly forgot your personality, there, for a second.’

‘Glad we’ve got that settled.’

‘Think of me when you dick around with people trying to purchase houses.’

‘Yeah, spare me a thought when you have conversations with boring people as part of your administrative job.’

‘You make it sound soul-destroying,’ I say.

‘It is.’

‘I don’t think so.’ I’m not certain how I feel about it. I don’t feel that my life and my job should be escaped, not right now. Not before I know what I should leave it all behind for. I have a feeling that maybe I could make a difference there. Alter the crueller behaviours of the pack by leading from the front. Is that realistic?

The boat draws closer.

‘I wonder if he’s going to stay here,’ I say. ‘On the island. Breaking the rules and smoking over the visitors. Would that suit him?’

‘Not in the least. Not unless he’s changed.’

‘Of course he’s changed!’

‘Yes, of course he’s changed,’ she echoes. ‘I didn’t ever really know him, you know.’

‘No. Me neither.’

‘Let me have your mobile number,’ she says.