S. K. Tremayne - The Ice Twins

Angus walked, and sweated, and nearly slipped. He wondered at the windless tranquillity of the afternoon, a day so still and clear he could see the last ferry, in the blue distance, crossing from Armadale to Mallaig.

Many houses, hidden in the firs and rowans, were totally shuttered for the winter. That accounted for much of the quiet: for this sense of desolation. In a way, this sheltered, stunning, southern peninsula of Skye was increasingly like one of the richest quarters of London: emptied by its own desirability, used by the wealthy for a few days a year. An investment opportunity. A place to store money. Other, less alluring parts of the Hebrides paradoxically had more life, because the houses were cheaper.

This place was cursed by its own loveliness.

But it was still lovely. And it was also getting dark.

The walk took him fifty difficult minutes, because the dark grey mud sucked at his boots, slowing him down, and because at one point he went wrong: climbing up onto Salmadair proper, heading unconsciously for the billionaire’s house with the huge, glass-walled living room, which suddenly reared in front of him, in the gathering gloom, protected by its rusty twines of barbed wire.

He’d taken the wrong path left. Instead of skirting Salmadair’s shingled beach.

Angus remembered Josh’s warnings about the mudflats at night. You could die out there. People die.

But how many really died? One a year? One a decade? It was still much safer than crossing a London road. This place was crime-free; the air was clean and good. It was much safer for kids. Safer for Kirstie.

Pressing between gorse bushes, slowly negotiating the beaten path, Angus scrambled over some very slippery rocks – gnarled with old barnacles, which scraped his fingers. His hands were bleeding a little. He was scratched and weary. The north wind was perfumed with seagull shit and bladderwrack, maybe the scent of newly chopped pine-wood, carried all the way from Scoraig and Assynt.

He was nearly there. In the dregs of the afternoon light he could see the exposed tidal causeway of rocks and grey shingle, littered with smashed crabshells. A slender green pipe snaked across the Torran causeway, burying itself in and out of the sands. He recognized the waterpipe, just as he recognized this part of the route. He remembered walking it as a boy, and as a very young man. And here he was again.

The lighthouse, the cottage, lay beyond, in the last of the cold, slanted sunlight. In just two minutes he would press the doorway, into his new home. Where his family would live: as best they could.

Reflexively, he looked at his phone. No signal. Of course. What did he expect? The island was entire and of itself: alone and isolated, and as remote as you could get in Britain.

As he ascended the final rise, to the lighthouse-keeper’s cottage, Angus turned and looked back at the mudflats.

Yes. Remote as possible. That was good. He was glad that he had coaxed his wife into making the decision to move here: he was glad he had persuaded her into believing, moreover, that it was her choice. He’d wanted them far away from everything for months, and now they had achieved it. On Torran they would be safe at last. No one would ask questions. No interfering neighbours. No friends and relatives. No police.

Kirstie.

Glancing up, I see Kirstie’s face, impassive, unsmiling, in the rear-view mirror.

‘Nearly there, darling!’

This is what I have been saying since driving out of Glasgow; and, in truth, when I reached Glasgow I thought we were ‘nearly there’, it looked so close on Google Maps, we were halfway through Scotland, weren’t we? Look, it can’t take much longer. Just two more inches.

But instead, like a terrible endless story, told by a chuntering bore, the road has gone on, and on. And now we’re lost amid the ghastliness of Rannoch Moor.

I have to remind myself why we’re here.

Two days ago Angus offered money we didn’t have, to fly us to Inverness, where he would pick us up, and leave all the moving to the men we’d hired.

But doing it this way seemed, somehow, a cheat – something in me wanted to drive the whole distance, with Kirstie and Beany; and someone had to bring the car, whether now or later. So I’d insisted Kirstie and I would make the entire journey, from the bottom corner to the very top of Britain, to meet Angus in the Selkie car park, in Ornsay, with the celebrated view of Torran.

Now I have regrets.

It is all so vast, and so bleak. Rannoch Moor is a bowl of green and dismal greyness, glacial in origin, presumably. Dirty, peat-brown streams divide the acid turfs; in places it looks as if the peat turf has been ripped apart then sewn back together.

I glance at Kirstie, in the mirror, then I glance at myself.

I truly don’t want to, but I have to do this: I have to go over it all, yet again. I must work out what is happening with Kirstie, and whether it stems from the accident itself. From that terrible fracture in our lives.

And so.

It was a summer evening in Instow.

My father and mother retired to the little town of Instow, on the north Devon coast, almost ten years ago. They’d ended up with just enough money, salvaged from my dad’s gently failed career, to buy a biggish house, overlooking the wide slothful river, at the point where it became an estuary.

The house was tall, with three storeys, and balconies, to make the most of the view. There was a proper garden, with a further, rabbity slope of meadow at the back. From the top floor there were glimpses of the sea between the green headlands. You could watch red-sailed boats heading for the Bristol Channel, as you sat on the loo.

From the start I liked my parents’ choice, of Instow. It was a nice house, in a nice little town. The local pubs were full of sailors, and yachtsmen, yet they were without pretensions. The climate was kindly, for England: solaced by southwestern breezes. You could go crabbing on the quayside, with bacon and string.

Inevitably and immediately, Instow became our default holiday home. A pretty, cheap, convenient bolthole for Angus and me, and then a place where we could take the girls, knowing they’d be looked after by their doting grandparents.

And my folks really doted. This was partly because the twins were so pretty and adorable – when they weren’t squabbling – and partly because my wastrel younger brother was wandering the world, never likely to settle down: so the twins were IT. The only grandkids they were likely to enjoy.

My father was, as a result, always eager for us to come down and take another holiday; and my American mother, Amy – shyer, quieter, more reserved – more like me – was almost as fervent.

So when I got the call, from Dad, and he airily asked: What are you doing this summer? I readily agreed – to another vacation in Instow. It would be our seventh or eighth. We’d had too many to count. But all that free childcare was just so tempting. All those long, delicious sleeps, of adults on holiday, while the twins went off with Granny and Granddad.

And this was the very first night, of the very last holiday.

I’d driven down with the kids in the morning. Angus was delayed in London, but due later. Mum and Dad were out for a drink. I was sitting in the kitchen.

The large airy kitchen was where everything happened in my mum and dad’s house, because it had one of the best views – and a lovely big table. All was quiet. I was reading a book and sipping tea; the evening was long, and beautiful: rosy-blue skies arched over the headlands and the bay. The twins, already sunburned from an afternoon on the beach, were, I thought, playing in the garden. Everything was SAFE.