Алия Уайтли: Skein Island

The library is empty for the first time today. I put away the rest of the returned books as I always do at closing time: the hardbacks on the shelves, the paperbacks in the rotating stand by the window that overlooks the car park. It’s blank out there, frozen under the shock of the outside light.

I think of the letter.

It arrived this morning, in a thick yellow envelope. My address was written by hand, in black pen. Above it was my maiden name. Miss Marianne Spence, like a call from the past. So I slipped a thumbnail under the flap of the envelope and ripped the past open.

The first thing I noticed was the letterhead, and then, at the very bottom, a single line written in the same hand as the address.

The night is so still. I decide nobody else is coming to the library tonight, so I go into the back office and take the letter from my bag, where it hangs on the peg behind the door. I unfold it and read it through again. Am I distrustful of my memory or the typescript? Both, I suppose.

But it’s the same.

I’m pleased to inform you that I have personally allocated you a place for the duration of one week (date to be arranged). This letter entitles you to free accommodation, inclusive of all meals and activities. Please contact the reception desk on the telephone number or email address provided to arrange a time for your arrival. I look forward to meeting you .

I run my finger over the letterhead.

SKEIN ISLAND

I’ve told nobody. Not even David.

I’ve thought of it so often, wondered what it would be like to spend a week there: to take the classes, sleep in a bungalow, to write out the story of my life so far and leave it there for posterity. Would it change me? Would it do to me what it did to my mother?

No matter how I feel about the island, one fact is inescapable. I didn’t contact Lady Amelia Worthington. Nobody has contacted Lady Amelia Worthington. She has been dead for years.

The quote on the bottom of the letter bothers me – it’s a strange choice. I sit at the computer and Google it. I knew it was familiar. Homer’s Odyssey . I read it for the first time in my late teens; it gave me a taste for sweeping tales of fate, where a man overcomes such perils, risks everything to get back to where he started. And Penelope: waiting, weaving, unravelling, with a grace that I didn’t understand. Did she not feel such rage to be left behind? When it happened to me, I wasn’t serene. I wanted to understand her, but I couldn’t. I still don’t.

I switch off the computer and go back into the library. We have a copy of the Odyssey : the Rieu translation, a Penguin Classic that lives on the poetry shelf. It never gets checked out. I go to it and open it at random, flicking through the pages on fast-forward. Odysseus races through his journey, spurning the nymph, escaping the Cyclops, resisting the sirens. I had hoped for my eye to fall on a line that would answer the unexpected questions – should I accept this offer? What does the dead Amelia Worthington want with me?

A soft swish and a gust of frigid air tells me the automatic doors have opened. I look around the shelf and see a man. He has a pleasant face, and brown hair that’s cut very short. His cheeks are red from the cold.

‘Can I help you?’

He gives me an inclusive smile, as if he knows me and I am compliant in a game we have decided to play. He’s holding a knife in his right hand.

He says something that changes everything. ‘Get in the back. Take off your clothes and lie down.’

Marianne asked to go in alone, so he waited in the car, listening to big band music on the radio.

He couldn’t remember the drive. This wasn’t unusual; it happened every morning, in the liquid flow of Swindon traffic. He had become attuned to the drip-feed of traffic lights leading to the factory until – standing in the cafeteria next to the tray of bacon, watching it glisten under the heat lamps – David would wake up properly for the first time each day. Everything that happened before that moment was merely a continuation of the previous night’s dream, and it always worried him, that lost time. Would he react in a crash, a crisis? Could he see danger and evade it with a flick of the steering wheel, a stamp of the brakes?

He hadn’t seen this coming. The look on Marianne’s face as she walked through the door at ten past eight that evening was not something he had ever prepared for. Her hands were empty. Usually she put down a canvas bag, heavy with books, on the hall floor next to the coat stand. David had walked out of the kitchen and caught her naked face and hands doing none of their normal things. Her coat was still on – unbuttoned, flapping – and her cheeks were white with cold. She came to him, cupped her hands around his elbows, and said, ‘We need to get to a police station, okay?’ He’d felt the shock of the moment, usual rules suspended.

He realised that he was only just coming out of it, sitting alone in the din of trumpets and drums, while Marianne faced this thing alone. She was probably making a statement to a sympathetic policewoman in a small clean room, her voice being recorded as she enunciated what had been done to her in precise detail. He couldn’t imagine what words she would use. She had a better vocabulary than him. He had a hard ball in the centre of his stomach that he could only describe as dread; he clenched his fists, tried to fight it off, wriggled in the seat.

The car park was half-full, and the glass sliding doors that led into the station were brightly lit. David could see a tiled floor and a standing pot plant, probably artificial. Nobody came or went.

The big band rhythm had segued into soft jazz before he saw her step out of the station and look around for their car.

He started the engine, drove to her; she got in and clipped in her seat belt, then gave him a smile and a shrug, easy and bright.

‘Let’s go home,’ she said.

‘Is it okay? What did they say?’

‘They’ll be on the lookout for him.’

‘Is that it?’ David said. He had a vision of getting out of the car, storming into the station and demanding justice, action, police cars out hunting all night. Or maybe he should take the law into his own hands and crouch in the bushes by the library, dressed in black, kitchen knife in hand – he had an idea it would make him feel better. But where was Marianne in his vision? He turned to her, took her cold little hand in his.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he said.

‘What do you want to know?’ She pulled her hand free.

‘Anything you want to tell me.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s get going.’

He manoeuvred to the exit, and pulled out. The streets were quiet, the nine o’clock lull between tired workers on overtime and energised bunnies making for the pubs. Swindon was one roundabout after another, and he hardly had to stop at all; he turned the steering wheel in measured amounts, first to the left, then the right.

‘Maybe we should get a takeaway,’ said Marianne. Her voice was perfectly normal, as was the sentiment. He knew she was talking about the Chinese on Wootton Bassett high street. He wished he could look at her face.