We are absolutely still when I see a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. A man is walking alongside the barbed wire, dressed in the dark green uniform of the prison guards. Too far away to see the face, but I can make out the blond hair and wide shoulders of Angus MacLeod. And he is staring at us.
I feel a wash of ice water running through me.
‘Bastard,’ I mutter, all thoughts of the Italians driven from my mind. ‘Come on, Con. Back to the bothy.’ There is still time: she hasn’t seen him.
Con makes to protest.
‘Come on,’ I say, my chest tight, my mouth dry. Please don’t see him, please don’t see him.
It is too late: Angus is walking towards us. Grinning.
My heart drumming, I stand and try to keep my voice steady. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘What sort of a greeting is that now, Dot? I thought you’d be pleased to see me. Con is. Aren’t you, Con?’ Angus had usually been able to tell us apart, somehow, ever since we had been children together at school.
‘You’re a guard here?’ Con’s voice is tight. ‘Who made you a guard?’
Angus turns around, spreading his arms wide, as if showing off his uniform. ‘I hear you went for a swim in the sea last week, Dot.’
‘Never you mind.’
‘There’s talk of it. Jumped off a cliff. Half drowned yourself. Much suspicion as to why you’re so intent on rescuing foreign men from the sea. Some have said that you’re feeling the lack of a man here.’ He gives a lewd grin.
‘You’re best to stay away from this island, Angus.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe any of the rumours about this place. The pair of you seem safe enough here. And there’s such a beautiful view.’ MacLeod gestures towards us.
‘Go back to Kirkwall,’ I say, my jaw clenched.
‘Now, Dot, you be careful, or you’ll get the same vicious reputation as your sister. I’m just looking. No harm in admiring beauty, is there?’
Next to me, Con’s breathing is loud, laboured. I put my arm across her shoulders and pull her towards me.
‘Come on. Let’s go home.’
We turn away from him.
‘Oh, now, that’s a shame,’ Angus calls. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me for a bannock?’
I can feel his gaze following us, all the way to the bothy.
And even after I have shut the door, I still sense his eyes on us. I can’t escape the feeling that, no matter how hard we try, we will never escape him.
We can never keep him out. The realization is a cold fist twisting inside my chest. Suddenly, it is hard to breathe.
I press the old piece of sailcloth more closely around the window, then wedge half an old plank across the window frame, piling stones around the base to secure it. Con uses a nail to tighten the screws in the door’s hinges, and then we stand on the bed together, steadying each other as we rearrange the wood, plastic sheeting and sailcloth that covers the hole in the roof. There is still a small gap, revealing the darkening sky, but it will have to do.
Then, without a word, we get our father’s gun from the kitchen cabinet. I pass the bullets to Con, and she loads them into the barrel, one by one.
We keep the gun between us on the bed.
That night, there is a rattling at our door. A scrabbling noise, as if something is clawing at the wood, then at the metal handle. Silver moonlight splashes through the hole in the roof, shifting as the wind lifts the tattered piece of sailcloth.
There’s a scratch, scratch of something at the door. A rat? A fox? But, no, there are no foxes here. My hands are clammy, my heart knocking against my ribs.
The bothy wall is hard against my back, and Con’s breathing is loud. ‘What is it?’ she gasps.
I shake my head.
The lock on the door holds fast, and the board in the window doesn’t move but, still, we sit with our backs hard against the wall, watching the door, waiting. The metal of the gun is cold; I clutch it so hard that my knuckles ache.
The scratching continues, then turns to a series of rattling thuds. And with every thud comes a cold, creeping terror and, a dank smell, like old soil.
In Kirkwall, they tell so many tales about lost lovers: drowned men and women – stories of adoration, stories of despair. For years, they’ve kept people away from this island, this damned place.
There is another tale told about a girl – a shepherd’s daughter – who grew up poor on Selkie Holm and lived in this bothy. She fell in love with a rich Scottish man, though she had a lover already, to whom she was betrothed. But he was poor and she was tired of being cold, sick of Selkie Holm, sick of the taste of potatoes and the texture of dry bread. The rich man would never look twice at her, she knew, while she was engaged to this poor man. Quietly and without fuss, she cooked a stew of potatoes and hemlock for her lover. When he complained at the bitter taste, she wept, so that he ate every last drop, just to dry her tears. Then she rowed his body out to sea and married the rich man. But she was driven mad by guilt and couldn’t rest, even in death. On some nights, the people in Kirkwall believe that her cold ghost and the ghost of her murdered beloved both walk the island on Selkie Holm, tormenting those who feel guilty. They are trying to return to the bothy, shivering. Searching for a body, hot with shame that might lend them warmth.
When Con first heard the story, she said that the girl should have buried the man, because you can never trust that the sea won’t wash things up.
People only feel