Watch Over Me (30 page)

I put a hand on Jamie’s arm, to stop him walking on. I don’t know why. Something told me to stop and
listen
to the fox.

But it was too late, the men had got too close and she’d gone.

We walked on, too.

But Jamie stumbled on something. I turned to catch him and a pair of yellow eyes met mine.

We both froze again.

The fox jumped aside into the woods and then onto the street again.

I was sure we had to follow her and I was ready to go myself if Jamie wouldn’t follow. I stepped onto the soft earth, strewn with pine needles, and into the wood, and though I didn’t know it at the time, I stepped into a different world.

A moment of hesitation, then Jamie followed.

We had to pick up the pace at once because the fox was fast and silent in front of us. With the light of the torch, we managed to follow the fox’s movement, guiding us ahead. We were both quiet, as if by a silent agreement not to frighten her. No more crying Maisie’s name, only our breathing and the soft rustling of us making our way into the wood.

We didn’t walk for long, barely ten minutes. We came to a little clearing in the wood, a semicircle of flat stones on one side, a wall of trees on the other. All was perfectly quiet, the silence was unbroken. The fox climbed onto a flat stone and stopped as Jamie’s torch beam trailed in front of her to reveal a little girl in pink pyjamas, lying curled up against a tree, asleep.

In somebody’s arms.

It was a woman. For a second, I thought it was Shona, the same blonde hair. But there was something about her that made a memory stir in my mind. The memory of a warm kitchen, the smell of toast and the feeling of a hand around my shoulders.

And the last time I’d seen her, many years later – a brief encounter outside a theatre in Aberdeen, before we all went on our way, never to meet again.

Elizabeth.

She had her arms around Maisie and her face was hidden in Maisie’s hair. Then she looked up, straight into Jamie’s face and smiled.

She let go of Maisie gently, stood up and took a few steps towards us. Maybe I should have been afraid, it was a ghost I was seeing, but as she walked towards us, I just felt this incredible relief, like they were all back – Flora, my grandfather, all the kind faces that looked upon us when we were children.

‘Elizabeth,’ I said and her name was so sweet, the relief was so great, that the tears started running down my cheeks, like water from a well.

She put her hand out towards us and caressed Jamie’s face, the same way she must have done a million times when Jamie was a child.

I looked at him and he was transfixed, his eyes wide in wonder.

He put his arms out to hold her and she came into his arms. He let go of the torch and it fell on the ground, spreading its light towards Maisie, while we were in darkness. I couldn’t see anything anyway, so I closed my eyes. I felt safe.

Jamie made a soft sound in the darkness and I knew she was gone. He threw himself on the ground, in front of Maisie, and held her close. I could see them in the torch’s stray beam. I shook myself and kneeled beside them, cupping Maisie’s face in my hands.

Jamie had his eyes closed and was holding on to her like his life depended on it.

I broke the spell.

‘We need to get her in the warmth …’ My voice sounded strange, like something coming from far away, like an echo in a cave.

Jamie opened his eyes and looked straight into mine.

Without a word, he stood up with Maisie in his arms. She hadn’t even stirred, lost in the deep sleep that only children can have.

I took hold of the torch and suddenly, we were somewhere else. Not deep in the woods like I thought, but … just behind St Colman’s Well. The calling of Maisie’s name filled the air again and I realised it’d never stopped. I could see the little white lights, dotted all over the garden, just beyond the trees.

We walked towards the lights, in silence.

I couldn’t help it. I thought, if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll hold my son one last time.

And I did, I held him in my arms again, as my body held on to itself for a brief second before dissolving again.

It was like when he was born, the greatest happiness I’ve ever known. I let myself drift into the black waters, I didn’t know where the loch ended and I began, and I was at peace. Because when I had to let go of him, I hadn’t left him on his own.

When my body stopped working and my heart stopped beating, I was left with an imprint of me, something that retained my features somehow, and still looked and felt like me. I was the shadow of myself but I could still touch and be touched, and if I wanted to, I could be seen. I was something fluid that could dissolve itself in the elements and then come back together, a body without matter, a body that could be itself and at the same time be water or stone or air.

I could turn into particles swirling in the sun, black waters lapping on the shores of the loch or a breeze between the trees. I could sit beside an owl, high on a branch in the darkness and contemplate the night in its company. I could swim with the otters and emerge among the reeds, their shiny black eyes looking straight into mine in a wordless conversation. I could turn to stone and when I did, I could feel the heart of the earth itself pulsating at the centre of each rock, vibrating with invisible heat and energy. The power of thousands and thousands of years, the time of the earth forming and shifting into what we know now, all that I could feel as I was the side of a hill, a pebble on the shore, a grey stone covered in moss in the middle of the woods. I could be fire and that was the silencing of all memories, the most powerful of all sensations as I burned and burned without pain, as I flickered with the flames in a swirl of orange and yellow.

And then, after having been air or water or stone or fire, I could be me again, Elizabeth McAnena’s shadow, with her face, her memories, her senses.

But all that is changing now.

Since that night in the forest, since I touched my son one last time, I seem to have lost all that was keeping me
together
. I don’t need to dissolve myself in the air or water, it’s happening all by itself, and it’s getting harder and harder to be me again. As if all the bits of me that once stuck together, like planets in a solar system kept in their orbits by gravity, had been freed and now followed their own course, too far from each other to be bound together.

And then, one day at dusk, I couldn’t see anymore, I couldn’t feel anymore. I couldn’t hear anything but a rhythmic sound, like the sound of waulking, with the cloth hitting the table over and over again, and the sound is growing stronger, coming nearer and nearer.

As I struggle to think, a memory comes back to me, an evening of many years ago. Flora singing, the two of us wee girls, the rain tapping gently on the window and the glow of the fire. It’s a winter night and all our families are there. Flora’s voice marks the rhythm and matches the beating of my heart, she’s slightly older than me and looks so pretty in her blue skirt and white socks, her wavy brown hair falling on her shoulders and her cheeks pink with the warmth of the fire. I long to be like her, grown up and lovely. I’m sitting on the carpet at my mother’s feet and the entire world is perfect and everybody is there, my dear father, my grandparents, my brother, everybody is alive, nobody has gone yet.

Flora’s song has a soft rhythm, the Gaelic words falling sweet out of her mouth like a waterfall …

And that’s my last thought before I’m not me anymore. My last thought before the last bit of my consciousness is gone and all I know, all I hear is a heart beating, fast and fluttery like a bird’s, and I realise it’s my own heart beating again … Flora’s song has turned into my heartbeat and there’s something else, another soft drum, another heart somewhere in the darkness, beating slow and strong alongside mine, and I’m in the dark and the warmth, but I really want to remember who I was and remember James and Shona and Jamie and Maisie and remember Glen Avich and my mother, she had blue eyes and …

    Dear Silke,

        I’m so sorry …

    Dear Silke,

        I hope you’ll understand …

    Dear Silke,

        I …

    My love. My love. I have to go.

I scrape away these last few words, obliterate them, and the piece of paper they’re written on joins the others in the bin.

I can’t do this. I can’t even speak to her. I can only see one way out and it’s to go away, the farthest I can go.

I’m flying to New Zealand. My cousin works there as a nurse, she can help me get a job. I can stay with them for a few weeks, until I find a place of my own. I’ll be in Auckland for a year or so and then travel on, maybe Australia, the Far East, wherever. I don’t want to be anywhere else long enough to betray myself, for anyone to know who I really am,
what
I really am.

I don’t care where I go, as long as it’s far from this little village, from this fishbowl. It’s suffocating me. Everybody’s watching, judging. Everybody will see how my eyes linger where they shouldn’t, how I get animated and I blush when I shouldn’t, how I’m not like everyone else.

Many people know, many people guessed. Maybe even my own parents. Just thinking about it makes me sick to the pit of my stomach.

There’s nothing for me here. Maybe somewhere out there there’s a man for me. Maybe I’ll change and be
normal
again, like I used to be.

No, I’ve never been normal. I was always like this.

I remember Karen Roathie, the girl who used to live across the road … I never tired of looking at her face. I wanted to be close to her all the time. I used to sneak my hand into hers … When we went to secondary school, I tried to be beside her all the time. God knows how nobody picked up on it. She was so beautiful in her uniform, her long black hair brushing my arm as she sat beside me, her leg touching mine briefly, and me trying to get that little bit closer to feel that light touch again. I used to dream at night, imagining her soft lips on mine and the scent of her neck as I held her tight …

See? I’ve always been this way. God, I don’t want to think about that. I want to forget all about it.

I don’t care what happens now. I just want to be where I’m not watched all the time. Where I don’t have to feel so horribly self conscious, like I’m trying so hard to hide and I don’t quite manage, and sooner or later people will find out who I really am.

I don’t even want to say goodbye to Silke. I know I’ve lost her, anyway. I hope she didn’t cry. I hope she’ll forget me, I hope she’ll be ok, find someone else, someone who can bear to be like this, to be all wrong.

No, I’m lying. I am good at it, it seems, but only to myself. The truth is that I hope she remembers me. And I can’t think of her with anyone else.

I can’t be what I am. Tim got me watching
Doctor Who
the other night and I cried because it talked about a planet close to a black hole, a planet that by all laws of gravity and attraction should fall into the hole and disappear, but somehow it doesn’t. It was called the ‘impossible planet’, and that’s me, the impossible girl, the girl without a place and time to be.

I can’t live being the way I am but I can’t not be the way I am. I’m close to a black hole and sooner or later I’ll fall in, and when I do, I don’t want my parents and all Innerleithen to see.

I’ve got to go, the sooner the better.

Scotland looks very green from up here. Blue and green, its coastline ragged and perfect and lovely. She looks tiny, a small little place in a big world. I hope that I’ll be back one day.

And there she was again, white as a sheet, sitting on the sofa, hugging a pillow. She looked ill. Maisie was sitting beside her, quiet as a mouse: she could sense that again, as many times before, Eilidh wasn’t feeling well.

As she heard me coming in, Eilidh sat up a little and smiled.

‘In already? Sorry, time flew by …’ She looked at her watch. ‘Oh my goodness, five o’clock. I’ve got nothing ready for dinner …’ She got up quickly from the sofa and just as quickly, she had to sit down again.

‘Uh-oh …’

‘Are you ok?’ I ran over to check on her.

‘Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine. Just a bit dizzy.’

‘Eilidh, you need to go to the doctor. This can’t go on. You’ve been like this for … for weeks!’

‘It’s just the change of season. And I got stressed when I went to Southport, you know, all that stuff to sort out …’

‘I know, I know. Since you came back, you haven’t been the same.’

Is it really here that you want to be? With me? I wanted to ask. But it wasn’t the time, not with Maisie looking at us, with a worried expression on her wee face.