The Visitors (3 page)

I felt utterly and suddenly drained.

Across the bay, smoke trailed like handwriting from the Dog Cottage chimney stack. They’d need plenty of fires to dry out that old place. I imagined mushroom carpets, all the floorboards carped and creaking, a thousand cobwebs on the ceiling. Paint and plaster falling from the walls in lumps. I bet they bought the place for a song, hoping to do it up. They hadn’t wasted any time. A mound of rubbish had already accumulated outside the door. Through the binoculars, I could make out a roll of lino, dark with dirt. There was a stack of broken tiles, and what looked like old paint tins, and a red-stained electric hob, rusted into disuse. The man appeared at the door, carrying a roll of ratty brown carpet. He dumped it at the door, looked up, then turned back inside. My heart thumped one beat harder. For a moment, I saw him perfectly. Absolutely perfectly. The man. The stranger. Her father.

Even sitting there alone, I blushed red to my roots. I lowered the binoculars, had another sip of tea, thought a moment. He was in his forties or fifties. Medium height, medium build. And he was striking. Handsome, perhaps. No, scratch that. He was pure gorgeous. Really, really good-looking. Almost unnervingly so. Stunning. Weather-beaten. Dark eyes. A full head of dark hair. He had model good looks, his face carved from almost sensual lines. He’d cause quite the stir on the island, if he’d come here alone. There’d be a string of spinsters queuing up to nab him. Andrea Simpson, she’d be there. And that dreadful Janet Campbell. I could just imagine her
standing on the shore, waving a tray bake and yoohooing for the dinghy, fishing for an invite in. He’d have every Bancree spinster beating down his door. Poor man wouldn’t know what hit him.

There was a flicker of movement on the islet. I jerked the glasses up, hoping to see him again, and banged my eyebrow on the binoculars. By the time I’d settled and focused, all I saw was the strange girl, turning back inside. It was only the briefest of glimpses. I wondered if she’d be in school. Even exuding that odd, skittish atmosphere, she’d probably be popular. With the boys, anyway.

I spied a little longer, but there was no more movement on Dog Rock, and nothing in the sea. No porpoises, no seals. Just gulls and gulls and gulls. It was turning into a glorious evening. I took my tea into my bedroom, and turned on the laptop. There was no internet reception. There was never internet reception. I only checked out of dumb optimism.

The falling sun made half my room glow golden. Books, stereo, a rack of CDs. Clothes bundled in a heap in one corner. There were band posters on the crooked walls, years out of date and suddenly foreign. At that moment, it was someone else’s room. I lay back on the bed, stretched out, my arms half-open to grip the edges of the single mattress. The coolness in the sheets washed across me. Sun tumbled through the window on columns of dust, fragments of human skin. I looked at the ceiling and thought numbly of kissing Richard on the bed. This was where we’d lost our virginity. We lit candles. It was all right. It was something to do. It was a secret, something unique between us. And now he was gone, and it wasn’t anything at all.

I was furious to find my eyes prickle hot with tears, and bit them back, scrubbing my face with a sleeve. Standing up, I leaned in close to the mirror and studied my reflection. Too
serious, no curves, too thin. Dull blonde hair. Romany, Slavic, gypsy, with almond-shaped eyes and broad, high cheeks. I dressed weird. I had no friends. I was a weirdo.

Pathetic, Flora.

I didn’t need Richard. Or anyone else. Reaching over, I clicked again on the computer, refreshing the internet. Nothing. I clicked again. Nothing. Page broken. No connection. My phone had no signal and besides, there was no one I could call. I turned on the radio. Static. The hiss and fuzz of static, creeping down the frequencies. Scattered scraps of distant music rang in fragments of pop, hip-hop, classical. The murmur of voices could be talk show radio or walkers on the road outside. It all filtered in the same. It all blended in together. Nothing here worked the way it should.

The island was built of things that had been abandoned and left to waste: houses, boats and people. Especially people. People who would never get away. Stuck here for ever because that was all they knew.

That would never be me.

I didn’t know how it would happen, but I was leaving, and soon. My time on the island was drawing to a close. The walls of the snow globe were pushing in around me, and I was ready to break out, to crack the walls and run. I knew this like I knew the peat blood thrumming in my veins or the salt tracks cracking from the corners of my eyes.

I woke to the sound of fractured voices. The sun had dipped and almost gone, leaving my room a ghostly blue. Voices. I’d left the radio on quiet, and there was a German-sounding talk show fuzzing and crackling at low volume. The words sounded strange, as though the radio was underwater. Or maybe it was me. I stretched, cricking my neck, crooked and hazy from the nap. Sleeping during the day always threw me wrong. I’d been asleep for less than an hour, but it had flattened me. I sat on the bed in the gloaming and waited for my brain to catch up. I swung my legs to the floor, and stood up to stretch. Something squelched. I looked down. Beside my bed, small patches of carpet pooled darker. I kneeled to investigate. The floor was sodden.

I prodded at the wet spots, looking around for an explanation. I checked the ceiling for a leak, but it was fine. Beside me, the distorted stereo burbled in the half-dark. Maybe something had burst beneath the floorboards. I’d have to tell Ronny about it. The room was cool. I frowned to see the window open, when I could have sworn I’d left it shut. Outside, Still Bay glowed with dusk, the sky a violet curtain. The breeze blew sharp with the march of autumn. I closed the window, but even as I latched it shut, the radio burbled with a sudden crash of static and I flinched, spooked at the surge in volume.

I turned the stupid thing off. With my room quiet, a
muted clatter drifted through the walls. Someone was home. As I moved for the door, my foot caught on something solid, and there was a dull clunk against the leg of the desk. My mug. I’d left my tea beside the bed. I must have knocked it over while dozing, and not realised. It was a weird splash. The damp spots looked like two kidney shapes, quite distinct, shaped the same and evenly spaced. I collected the cup and turned for the door.

In the kitchen, Ronny was making meatballs. Leaning over the worktop, he was wrist-deep in a plastic bowl, shaping mince and onions, parsley and garlic. The mixture escaped between his fingers in a grey paste. He had long hair and seldom shaved, which made him look a bit like a Viking, or a werewolf. Him and Mum had been together five years. I used to fight them both about that, but I grew out of it. They were just trying to get by. They were scared of being alone, just like everyone else. Ronny was a good guy. Plus he was drip-feeding me his 80s and 90s rock records, from AC/DC to ZZ Top. He worked hard at Clachnabhan, he loved his wife and baby, and he cared well enough for me. He had his shirtsleeves rolled high, his hair tied up in a little samurai topknot. His arms wriggled with muscles from raking barley.

‘Hey, Ronny,’ I said. He started at my voice. He looked tired.

‘Hi, Flo. How’s it going, poppet?’

I shrugged. ‘All right. Richard’s away tomorrow.’

‘Aye, of course. You OK?’

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I’ll miss him, but maybe it was reaching a finish anyway. We’ve been sitting out there for ages, not really talking. To be honest, I think he can’t wait to get away.’

‘Sounds like someone else I know.’

‘Right enough.’

He smiled, blankly, shoulders hunched, hands in the bowl of mince. It was rare to see him without a spark of laughter.

‘What’s the matter, old-timer?’

‘Ah, nothing,’ he said, feeling for the words. ‘Probably nothing. It’s just Dougie. I wish he’d turn up.’

‘He’ll be fine. He’ll be on the booze somewhere.’

Ronny shook his head.

‘We’ve called round all the bars, put up posters all over Tanno. It’s been more than a week, and no one’s seen him. We’re worried he might be in a ditch. Or that he fell into the water.’

Ronny sometimes worked with Doug MacLeod at the distillery. He was an odd-job man, equal parts cleaner, labourer and stevedore. He camped out in the woods over summer, and stayed in people’s outhouses during winter. He was also a drunkard, but the right sort for all that, soft as butter. Everyone had seen him, mid-afternoon blootered outside the Bull Hotel, or in one of the Tanno harbour bars. He’d sit on a bench outside the pub, a permanent flush to his face, hollering hellos and trying to light cigarettes. He was forty-something, and looked like he was sixty. Most nights he drank until he slid quietly to the floor. Ronny was right. It would be too easy for him to fall into the harbour on his stagger home. A heavy coat and work boots would take care of the rest, and that would be the end of Doug MacLeod.

‘He’s a daft old lad, but … well. We’d miss him.’

Ronny looked into his bowl of meat and onions. I didn’t know what to say.

‘It’ll be fine,’ was the best I could manage. ‘He’ll show up somewhere.’

Ronny paused. ‘Billy never did,’ he said, and that made me think again.

Bill Wright was another island name. He’d disappeared
the previous winter, vanished overnight. Someone had called round his house to give him a lift to work, and he wasn’t to be found. The ashes were cold in the grate, the door wide open. The constabulary sent out a dog team and searched the woods and coast around his house, but that was the last anyone had seen of Billy. Even then, it was hard to be especially worried.

‘Come on, though. Billy’s a wanderer. He likes to walk, he likes to travel. It’s just like him to up sticks and vanish for a while.’

‘Aye. But he always said goodbye, and he always came home. And now, with Dougie too, it’s getting to me.’

‘You don’t think it’s the same thing?’

‘Naw,’ said Ronny. ‘There’s lads at the distillery saying as much, but it’s only gossip. Sad, that’s all.’

We stood and listened to the shoreline, listened to the pan lid clunking on the stove.

‘Well. What’s next on the CD list? I’m done with the last lot.’

‘What did you think of Kyuss?’

I pulled a face. ‘Bit monotonous for me. I preferred the Creedence Clearwater lot.’

‘You’re an idiot.’

‘Love you too.’

He grinned at me, but his smile was forced and brittle. Dougie MacLeod. Poor old Doug. He looked around the kitchen. He held up gooey hands.

‘It’s meatballs for tea,’ he said.

Mum came home half an hour later, spilling bags of shopping. She was followed through the door by a hulking giant of a man. He carried a kit bag in one hand and a wriggling baby Jamie in the other arm, and all my melancholy vanished in a wink.

‘Uncle Anders!’ I shouted, and darted to the hallway. I put my arms around him, giving him a delighted hug. He dropped the kit bag, his hand settling on my shoulder like a blanket.

‘
Hej
, Flora,’ he boomed, crushing me into his stomach, and Jamie giggled as he grabbed for my hair.

‘I found this rascal wandering the streets in Tanno,’ said Mum, smiling through her tiredness. ‘Thought I’d better fetch him in for tea.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said, suspiciously, and patted his barrel stomach. ‘I don’t think he needs any more feeding.’

‘You cheeky bastard,’ growled Anders, then erupted into laughter. He grabbed Ronny’s outstretched hand, and hauled him into a bear hug.

Anders Tommasson was an engineer on an oil rig. He had been brought up in Denmark, but he’d been on the island longer than I’d been alive. When he wasn’t on the rigs, he lived alone on the north-east coast of Bancree. His was the last house on the island before the abandoned crofts. He and Ronny went back years. They’d worked on the fish farm when
they were younger men, before Ronny started with the distillery and Anders found money on the rigs. He was Jamie’s godfather. Whenever he was home, the two would meet up for a drink in Tanno or in Tighna, and a grinning, swaying Anders would show up the next morning with Ronny passed out on his shoulder. On one occasion, they turned up three mornings later, having accidentally found themselves in Copenhagen. Ronny was in the doghouse for a month, but Mum had a real soft spot for Anders, and never stayed mad at them for long.

‘How you doing, man?’ grinned Ronny. ‘We weren’t expecting you for another couple of weeks.’

‘I had to come home early,’ said Anders, gravely, and his face fell. ‘It is most urgent.’

‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘Perhaps you will understand if I say … it is a matter of international importance.’

Ronny’s eyes widened.

‘You don’t mean …?’

‘I do. I do.’

Laughing, the two men embraced again. Anders thumped Ronny’s back, making him cough.

‘What on earth is going on?’ said Mum.

‘It’s the football, Cath. He’s come back for the game.’

‘What game?’

‘Scotland–Denmark. Kick-off Friday night.’

‘Of course,’ grinned Anders, ‘I could not allow you to lose all alone. I should be there to make it much worse for you.’

‘You wish. This is grand. Dancer. Pure dancer.’

‘Never mind your football,’ said Mum. ‘Dance off to the bathroom and put Jamie through the tub.’

Chuckling, the two of them went to run the baby through his bath and bed routine. Jamie was ridiculously small in the
big man’s arms, but Anders held him like a bluebird. Mum started setting the table. She looked shattered.

‘I’ll do that, Mum. You sit down.’

She hesitated, then sunk into a chair. Mum was assistant manager at the Co-op in Tanno. She worked the afternoon shift five days a week. Jamie stayed with my grandparents in Tighna while Mum was at the shop, then she picked him up on the way home. She’d only been back from maternity leave for a couple of months, and the work routine had hit her hard.

‘You OK, Mum?’

‘I suppose so, love. The delivery was late, as usual, which means I was late, as usual. We were lucky to catch the last ferry.’