Surtsey’s face was hot. She placed the back of her hand against her cheek, her cool fingers felt nice. She’d always had bad circulation, something she shared with her mum, the two of them in thick socks and slippers around the house, blankets over their knees on the sofa as they snuggled in to watch the latest Netflix thing.
Surtsey looked out the window then down at her lap.
‘I was seeing him,’ she said, head down. She didn’t want to look at her mum’s face.
Silence for a while, so that she thought maybe Louise hadn’t heard.
‘Sleeping with him,’ she said.
There was a long silence. ‘Oh, Sur.’
‘I know,’ Surtsey said. ‘A married man, old enough to be my father, what about his poor wife. You don’t have to say any of it.’
She looked up, her eyes wet.
Her mum was staring at her, jaw tight. ‘I wasn’t going to say that.’
‘You don’t need to.’
Surtsey reached out and took Louise’s hand. Shocking lack of flesh, like she was already just a skeleton in a thin bag of skin. She squeezed gently, her thumb in her mum’s palm.
Surtsey wiped at her tears. ‘Alice knows.’
‘Oh, darling.’
‘I deserve it.’
A long pause. Too long.
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself.’
‘Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been a fucking idiot.’
‘We all do stupid things.’
‘Not you,’ Surtsey said.
Louise looked out the window. ‘I’ve had my fair share.’
‘Like what?’
Louise looked at the congealing food on the tray, took a sip from a water bottle. Swallowing looked like such hard work, Surtsey didn’t know how her mum managed it. Louise put the bottle down with a trembling hand.
‘Let’s talk about something else.’
Surtsey touched her knuckles to her eyelids, the cold of her hand drawing the heat away from her face. ‘Mum, what are you not telling me?’
‘Nothing.’ Louise picked at a loose thread on the blanket. ‘When you come to the end of your life…’
‘Mum.’
‘…things reduce down. Like you’ve been simmering the whole time, reducing until there’s only the essence left. All the rest of it.’ Louise lifted a hand and waved at the bland decor. ‘It’s just distraction. Noise.’
She looked out the window. The haze from earlier had lifted and Fife was in sharp relief. Light glinted off the windows of the holiday homes at Burntisland, winks of life against the landscape.
‘How’s the boat?’ she said.
Surtsey remembered waking up in it. Was that just this morning? ‘It’s fine.’
Louise turned. ‘I’d like to go out in it.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’re not well enough for a boat trip.’
‘Says who?’
Surtsey pointed at Louise’s body under the covers and immediately regretted it.
Louise smiled. ‘Are you going to deny a dying woman her last request?’
Surtsey snorted. ‘Don’t pull that “last request” crap, you’ll be around for a while yet.’
‘Maybe not.’
Surtsey felt her heart tighten. ‘Have they said something?’
‘Nothing like that.’
Surtsey narrowed her eyes. ‘I can’t get you into the boat on my own and you can’t manage yourself, so how would we do it?’
‘Iona could help, maybe.’
Surtsey sighed. ‘When was the last time she came to see you?’
‘Yesterday.’
Surtsey frowned. ‘Really? She never mentioned it to me.’
‘Your sister doesn’t need to tell you everything.’
‘What was she doing here?’
Louise looked at her. ‘What a strange question, she came to see me of course.’
‘She can’t help anyway, she’s working.’
Something came over Louise’s face and she pressed the red button on her bed for assistance.
A few moments later there was a knock on the door and Donna came in.
‘Not eating?’ she said.
Louise shook her head. ‘You know how it is.’
‘You can manage a wee bit, surely?’
Louise pursed her lips. ‘Donna, when do you finish your shift?’
Donna looked at her watch. ‘Just under an hour. Why?’
‘How would you like a boat trip?’
23
The wine had worn off and Surtsey’s head felt tight, but once they got a few knots up the spray in her face and the wind skimming off the water slapped her awake. Louise sat in the prow, blankets already wet, the bulk of a lifejacket making her look more solid than she had in a long time. Surtsey was on the tiller, steering the boat into the brown-grey swells, not much in the way of waves today but it didn’t take a lot to make them buck and bounce, the mass of water like brick under the hull, a shudder with every hit.
They were pointing northeast, the boat aiming for Berwick Law but really just getting distance from shore into the wide-open space.
Donna sat to Surtsey’s right, gripping the rubber handles on the edge of the boat, feet wide apart.
‘You OK?’ Surtsey said.
‘Fine.’
Louise looked more alive than Surtsey had seen her in ages. She regretted not having brought her out in the boat recently. Her mum loved the open water, loved islands, loved the remoteness and isolation and freedom. Why hadn’t Surtsey taken her out here every bloody day? Because she was already used to the idea of Louise dying, she had already put her in a coffin and lowered her into the ground in her mind. It was a terrible thing to admit to herself.
‘She seems happy,’ Donna said, nodding at Louise.
‘Yeah.’
‘What about you?’ She was shouting over the buzz of the engine.
‘What about me?’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
It was the standard answer. The word you never had to think about, let alone mean. Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. When really you were terrified, miserable, confused, angry, hopeless.
Louise turned back to them. Her eyes were so bright Surtsey wondered if she’d taken something. Louise pointed west. Surtsey had been waiting for it, knowing all along what her mum wanted to do.
The Inch.
Without speaking Surtsey aimed the boat westwards in a loop.
Of course this was crazy. They didn’t have permission to land, it wasn’t an officially sanctioned
