Now her eyes are glassy and I can feel the burn of the sickness in my own skin. I have a constant roiling in my gut, as though the illness is creeping from Con’s body to mine.
There is an old belief on these islands that our souls can be tethered to another’s before birth, and that the moment you meet your soul’s twin, you recognize them. Our mother had told us that you couldn’t bind your soul to a stranger: we were each other’s soul twins because we had known each other always, she said. Anything else was ridiculous, a fairytale, something to be woven into a story, along with family feuds and shipwrecks.
‘And you must look after one another,’ Mammy had said sternly. ‘I’ll know if you don’t.’
It has been a year since our parents disappeared.
And now Con is ill – really ill – and I know I must do something. I feel itchy with anxiety, untethered. A week of her coughing through the nights, wheezing on each breath. I sit on the bed beside her, wiping a cloth across her sweat-sheened forehead, over the growing shadows above her collarbones. When I gather her in my arms, the rungs of her ribs feel fragile, as if she is shrinking.
‘I need to take you to Kirkwall,’ I murmur. ‘The hospital –’
‘No,’ Con gasps. Her eyes are glassy with fever.
Above my head, through the hole in the roof, I see clouds, then blue sky, then stars. Time blurs and I begin to count the days by listening for the whistles from the camp, the shouts that carry on the wind, the explosions from the quarry that ripple through the ground, like seizures.
I imagine him walking down to the quarry. I remember his promise. I can help you. I try.
The wind blasts through the bothy. In the mornings the sailcloth over the window is crisp with ice. He isn’t coming – how could he?
The shrill of the whistle wakes me. Con is worse, her lips pale, her skin translucent. I count to five and then I force myself to stand, to pull on my dress, to open the door and feed the chickens, to boil water for porridge that Con will not eat.
I will row across to Kirkwall myself, I decide. The hospital will have medicine and, if I explain, they will surely give me something. Or the doctor may come to see her – I will use some of the money we have saved from selling the house in Kirkwall at the end of last year, when we decided that, no matter what, we wouldn’t be leaving Selkie Holm.
I take the porridge off the stove and put it on the table to cool. I will leave Con to sleep a while longer, then tell her I am going.
There is a metallic rattling outside, then a knock at the door. I jump. Con doesn’t stir.
I open the door, ready to tell Angus to leave us alone.
And there he is.
Che-sa-ray.
‘Dorotea,’ he says.
The expression on his face is serious, uncertain, and, for a lurching moment, I think he must have escaped from the camp somehow, that he has come here expecting to hide. Or that he has died and this is his ghost. That the curse on this haunted island is exactly as they describe it in Kirkwall.
I begin to shut the door.
‘Wait!’ He puts the toe of his boot in the gap. The door stops. No ghost, then. ‘Do not be frightened,’ he says.
‘Why are you here? How are you here?’
‘The major says I can come. For your roof.’ He cranes his neck and gestures at the hole, which shows a cloud-scudded patch of sky.
I open the door and peer outside. Behind him, a large wheelbarrow, full of wood and some pieces of slate.
‘I make a promise to you,’ he says.
‘Oh.’ I can find nothing else to say.
I follow him outside into the weak winter sunlight, flinching at the scouring wind. Cesare begins to unload the wood from the wheelbarrow. His shoulders are broad and he lifts the wood with ease at first, but he looks thin and he has to pause at one point to catch his breath.
‘In Italy I am strong,’ he says, as if reading my thoughts. ‘But here . . .’ He indicates the sky, hunches his shoulders at the wind and shrugs. ‘Hard to be strong.’ He stops, looks at me. ‘You are here alone? It is dangerous. Cold.’
‘I live with my sister. We like it here.’
He nods. His eyes are dark, warm, unreadable. ‘Very beautiful here.’
I can feel the heat in my cheeks. I look away. ‘My sister is ill. She’s sleeping now. I . . .’ To my horror, I feel tears burning my eyes, an ache in my throat. I blink rapidly, until the feeling passes.
Cesare reaches out, as if to touch my arm, and stops. ‘I will make your roof good,’ he says. ‘Your sister will be better. She will be warm.’
I swallow. ‘Thank you.’
He looks up at the roof and picks up pieces of wood, measuring them with his eye before selecting one. ‘I must climb up.’
‘I don’t have a ladder, but here . . .’ He follows me to the side of the bothy, where our three chickens peck and scratch in their wooden coop. ‘Will this frame be strong enough?’
He eyes it, pressing down hard on one of the wooden struts. ‘Maybe strong. Maybe break.’ He grins, apparently unconcerned at the idea of fracturing his leg or neck.
He lifts it; the chickens, suddenly homeless, cluck in disapproval and rush towards their nesting box. Cesare scoops up one bird and holds her for a moment against his chest. She squawks indignantly but doesn’t struggle.
‘Is warm,’ he says.
‘She’s called Henrietta.’
‘En-ree-ayt-ah,’ he echoes, and again, it is music. ‘You are living only from eggs?’ He releases Henrietta, who stalks off, clucking.
‘No. My parents had a house in Kirkwall. We sold it and moved here after they . . .’ Left. Disappeared. Vanished. ‘Well, some time after.’ We
