S. Tremayne - The Ice Twins

Angus frowned, and sighed. It was a good question: one he had asked himself. He struggled towards an answer.

‘Don’t know. Not really. Maybe Torran became a kind of symbol. Place I would one day return to. Lost paradise. Also it’s about five million miles away. Kept meaning to come up, especially since you guys moved here, but of course …’ And there it was again, that fateful pause. ‘By then we had the girls, the twins. And. That changed everything. Cold Scottish island, with yowling babies? Toddlers? All a bit daunting. You’ll understand, Josh, when you have kids with Molly.’

‘ If we have kids.’ Josh shook his head. Stared down at the stains of milky coffee in his cup. ‘If.’

A slightly painful silence ensued. One man mourning his lost child, another man mourning the children he hadn’t yet had.

Angus finished the last of his lukewarm coffee. He turned in the uncomfortable wooden pew and glanced out of the window, with its thick, flawed, wind-resistant bullseye-glass.

The glass of the window warped the beauty of Torran Island, making it look ugly. Here was a leering landscape, smeared and improper. He thought of Sarah’s face, in the semi-dark of the loft, warped by the uncertain light. As she peered into the boxes.

That had to stop.

Josh spoke up: ‘The tide must be out now, so you’ve got two hours, max. You sure you don’t want me to come with, or give you a lift in the RIB?’

‘Nope. I want to squelch across.’

The two exited the pub into the cold. The wind had keened and sharpened as the tide had fallen. Angus waved goodbye to Josh – I’ll come round the house tomorrow – as Josh’s car skidded away, chucking mud.

Opening the boot, Angus hauled out his rucksack. He’d packed the rucksack, very carefully, this morning, at his cheap Inverness hotel, so he had everything he needed for one night on the island. Tomorrow he could buy stuff. Tonight he just had to get there.

Across the mudflats.

Angus felt a pang of self-consciousness: as if someone was watching him, mockingly, as he adjusted the straps of his rucksack, distributing the weight. Reflexively he glanced around – looking for faces in windows, kids pointing and laughing. The leafless trees and silent houses gazed back. He was the only human visible. And he needed to be on his way.

The path led directly from the Selkie car park, down to some mossed and very weathered stone steps. Angus followed the route. At the bottom of the steps the path curved past a row of wooden boats – their keels lifted high onto the shingle, safe from approaching winter storms. Then the path disappeared completely, into a low maze of seaweedy rocks, and grey acres of reeking mud. It was going to take him half an hour, at least.

And his phone was ringing.

Marvelling at the fact he could get a signal – hoping faintly, futilely, that there might also be a signal on Torran – Angus dropped his rucksack on to the pebbles, and plucked his mobile from his jeans pocket.

The screen said Sarah .

He took the call. The fourth, from his wife, of the day.

‘Hello?’

‘Are you there yet?’

‘I’m trying. I was about to cross. I’m at Ornsay. Just seen Josh.’

‘OK, so, what’s it like?’

‘I don’t know, babe.’ He tutted. ‘Told you: I’m not there yet. Why don’t you let me get there, first, and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’

‘OK, yes, sorry. Hah.’ Her laughter was false. He could tell this even on a cell phone, from six hundred miles away.

‘Sarah. Are you all right?’

A hesitation. A distinct, definite pause.

‘Yes, Gus. I’m a bit nervous. You know? That’s all …’

She paused. He frowned. Where was this going? He needed to distract his wife, get her focused on the future. He spoke very carefully.

‘The island looks lovely, Sarah. Beautiful as I remember it. More beautiful. We haven’t made a mistake. We were right to move here.’

‘OK. Good. Sorry. I’m just jangling. All this packing!’

Sarah’s anxiety was still there, lurking. He could tell. Which meant he had to ask; even though he didn’t want to know any answers. But he had to ask: ‘How’s Kirstie?’

‘She’s OK, she’s …’

‘What?’

‘Oh. It’s nothing.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’

‘No, it’s not, Sarah, it’s clearly not. What is it?’ He gripped his frustration. This was another of his silent wife’s conversational stratagems: drop a tiny unsettling hint, then say ‘it’s nothing’. Forcing him to gouge the information out of her; so he felt guilty and bad – even when he didn’t want the information. Like now.

The tactic drove him crazy, these days. Made him feel actually, physically angry.

‘Sarah. What’s up? Tell me?’

‘Well, she …’ Another long, infuriating pause stopped the dialogue. Angus resisted the temptation to shout What the fuck is it?

At last Sarah coughed it up: ‘Last night. She had another nightmare.’

This was, if anything, a relief to Angus. Only a nightmare? That’s all this was about?

‘OK. Another bad dream.’

‘Yes.’

‘The same one?’

‘Yes.’ A further wifely silence. ‘The one with the room; she is stuck in that white room, with the faces staring at her, staring down. It’s nearly always the same nightmare. She gets that one, always – why is that?’

‘I don’t know, Sarah, but I know it will stop. And soon. Remember what they said at the Anna Freud Centre? That’s one reason we’re moving. New place, new dreams. New beginning. No memories.’

‘All right, yes, of course. Let’s talk tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Love you.’

‘Love you.’

Angus frowned, at his own words, and ended the call. Slipping his phone in his pocket, he hoisted his heavy rucksack – feeling like a mountaineer attempting a summit. He could hear the clink of a heavy wine bottle inside, knocking against something hard. Maybe his Swiss Army knife.

Picking his way through, he edged along rocks and sand, trying to find the safest route. The air was redolent with the heady smell of rotting seaweed. Seagulls wheeled above, calling and heckling. Haranguing him for something he hadn’t done.

The tide was way out, exposing old grey metal chains, slacked in the mud, linked to plastic buoys. Whitewashed cottages regarded him, indifferently, from the curving wooded shoreline of mainland Skye, to his right. On the left, Salmadair was a dome of rock and grass, encircled by sombre firs; he could just see the top of that big unoccupied house, on Salmadair, owned by the billionaire, the Swedish guy.

Josh had told Angus all about Karlssen: how he only came here for a few weeks in the summer, for the shooting and the sailing, and the famous views over the Sound: to the waters of Loch Hourn and Loch Nevis, and between them the vast massif of Knoydart, with its snow-iced hills.

As Angus trudged along, hunched under the weight of his rucksack, he occasionally lifted his head to look at these same brooding hills. The great summits of Knoydart, the last true wilderness in western Europe. Angus realized, as he surveyed the view, that he could still distinctly remember the names of Knoydart’s enigmatic peaks. His granny had taught him so many times: Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

It was a poem. Angus was not a fan of poetry, yet this place was a poem.

Sgurr an Fhuarain, Sgurr Mor, Fraoch Bheinn.

He walked on.

The silence was piercing. A kingdom of quietness. No boats out fishing, no people walking, no engine noise.

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.