And maybe as it closes I hear the muted protest of bell clappers inside copper and tin; the impatient shudder of wires and veins inside hollow walls; the whisper of worlds behind doors, inside cupboards, beneath still blue skies and oceans of green.
I don’t care if I do.
And that’s when I know why I came back. Why I had to say goodbye.
So that I would no longer be afraid to fly.
CHAPTER 33
I buy a seat for El on the plane. An indulgence maybe, and one that earns me a few strange looks, but it’s one I can afford after booking a late Christmas Eve flight from Heathrow. Besides, El squirrelled away more money from her art sales than anyone had realised, so it only seemed fair. I didn’t want her to be in the hold or an overhead locker – anywhere but right beside me as we finally flew over the ocean to The Island.
I had to transfer her ashes from the ugly great urn to a cardboard box with pink-painted flowers and a viewing window. Already, I’m dreading the moment I have to literally let go of her, but I’m more afraid about what happens after I have. Carrying her around with me has begun to feel as natural as feeling her pain when she’s not there.
Halfway across the North Atlantic, I finally fall asleep. I dream of The Island – of Captain Henry’s Santa Catalina – its beaches and lagoons and palm trees painted in El’s thick brushstrokes. I dream of Captain Henry finally standing at the wheel of the Satisfaction, and El and I at its bowsprit, as turquoise Caribbean waves bear us ever closer to The Island’s shores. I wake up feeling uneasy, maybe even afraid. Outside my window it’s dark as tar. I can see the white plains and black shadows of my reflection, the dark hollows of my eyes staring back at me.
‘A wise sailor never leaves port on a Friday,’ I whisper.
I hear El’s voice, clear as a bell. It’s Saturday now, you idiot.
And when I look at my watch, I see that she’s right. It’s Christmas Day.
So I look back out the window and I think of a pink dawn sky. El gripping my hand tight as we watch the sea and wait.
And I smile, lay my fingers over the box’s lid. ‘We’re finally doing it, El. We’re finally going.’
*
I’m feeling less enthusiastic after a nearly ten-hour layover in Bogotá, followed by a two-hour flight to San Andrés, and another to Providencia. It’s night again by the time I manage to escape El Embrujo airport. The taxi driver keeps up a friendly commentary that I’m in no shape to appreciate as he rattles along empty streets, lit only by the lights of cottages and cabanas, the occasional hotel. I can’t see the sea, but I can smell it: far stronger and cleaner than in Leith.
When he finally stops with an abrupt squealing of brakes, I’m so glad to have arrived, I could kiss him. Until he’s pulled my suitcase out of the boot, and both it and I are standing in the middle of another empty road.
‘Where’s the hotel?’
He grins, flashing gappy teeth. ‘On Santa Catalina.’
‘I know that.’
‘Santa Catalina is a different island from Providencia.’
‘Yes, I know that too,’ I say, now very close to panic. ‘But they’re supposed to be joined.’
‘They are,’ he says, pointing over my shoulder.
When I turn to look, I realise that what I thought was a boardwalk lined with benches and bright lanterns is actually a footbridge. A very long footbridge.
The taxi driver takes pity on me, pats my shoulder gently. ‘It’s okay, okay. It’s only one hundred yards, and then you are on Santa Catalina. The hotel is only past the fort, not far. Okay?’
The bridge is beautiful. Painted blue, green, yellow, and orange, it jostles and bobs against floating rafts. Not even in Mirrorland would either of us have imagined we’d ever have to walk to The Island, guided by swinging lanterns. The thought manages to make me smile.
When I finally reach the other side, there is a tree of high wooden signs, and my heart lifts when I read the first two: ‘Morgan’s Fort’, ‘Morgan’s Head’. I walk along the water’s edge towards the only lights. I can hear the sea, see the shadows of boats. The lights coalesce, revealing the hotel in increments, but I’m certain that I’ve arrived only when I see its small recessed entrance lit up gold. Just before I turn off the walkway, I see another wooden sign, faded and warped with age. ‘Welcome to Santa Catalina’, it says. ‘Pirates will be Hanged and Protestants will be Burned’. And I smile again. This time so wide, my lips hurt.
*
The hotel is basic, clean, wonderful. But after I’ve got into my room, I find that my tiredness has vanished. I don’t want to sleep, to risk dreaming about another place, another time. I want to be here, now.
I leave El on my bedside table and go back out onto the walkway, wander until I see more lights. I stop. The bar they belong to is called the Henry Morgan. Set into its wall is the encyclopaedia’s picture – El’s picture – our pirate king, bearded and long-haired and unsmiling. I go around the entrance, onto staggered tiers of decking and palm trees strung with fairy lights. It’s deserted, so I go down to the bottom deck, sit as close to the water’s edge as I can get. The warm wind smells of seaweed and smoke and cooking fish. A low-hanging line of lanterns swings between my table and the other side of the decking like a golden shield.
A waitress in a T-shirt emblazoned with the same Henry Morgan portrait comes out of the bar with a smile, and hands me the cocktail list. She looks young, maybe still in her teens, her black hair braided short, make-up glittery. I probably look
