The night crowds in, black and starless.
I shudder. And my heart pounds in my chest, in my throat, in my fingertips. And I can still feel Angus’s weight crushing me, the cold, dead-fish touch of his skin. The smell of him. I close my eyes, counting my breaths. I swallow the vomit that rises into my mouth.
On the bed is the metal heart. There is a smear of blood where I hit his head.
I curl around myself, wrapping my arms around my chest and stomach, tight. Tighter. But I still can’t hold myself together. I hunch in the corner, gripping the metal heart so tightly that my hand shakes. My whole body shakes. My teeth chatter.
I have never been so aware of being alone in this world. No Dot to stand beside me. Not now and not ever.
Never.
I remember John O’Farrell’s words. The grief on his face.
That body in the quarry. That wasn’t Angus
And, seeing him again, my last hope is gone. Somehow, when I’d remembered dragging the body to the quarry, I’d pictured his face. I’d thought of him, broken and bloodied. I’d imagined him, lying dead. And even when John O’Farrell had told me that Angus’s body hadn’t been found, that he’d disappeared somewhere, I still, somehow, hoped that he was wrong.
I’d refused to believe him when he told me that the body I’d dragged to the quarry had been my sister’s.
Now Dot lies in the morgue beneath the hospital in Kirkwall.
O’Farrell had wept as he had told me.
I had shaken my head. Some sound had come from my mouth, but it wasn’t words. I’d collapsed to O’Farrell’s feet, slapping at his legs when he tried to pick me up, because no, no, no. No one could help me, apart from her. And how could she be gone? She couldn’t be gone, any more than my hand could be gone. Or my eyes or my own heart in my chest. Or my soul.
But now I’d seen Angus, I believed it at last. Dot was alone, her body alone, lifeless. Cold.
I remember again, her chilly skin, those icy lips. The blank eyes, unseeing.
No.
She had never liked being cold. I think of her laughter, the warmth of her hand in mine. At night, when we lay, back to back, I hadn’t known whose breath was whose.
Now, if I close my eyes, I can still hear her voice calling to me. Like our mother’s, like our father’s. All their lost voices, whispering to me from the sea.
I hunch further into the corner of the chapel, my body still quivering.
I’ll never see her smile again.
She used to like resting her head on my shoulder. I can almost feel the weight of it, feel the ripple of laughter that would travel from her body into mine.
How is it possible for someone to stop existing? To step out of the world, as if they had never been, and for the world to go on turning, the sun to go on rising? How is it possible to go on breathing, now that she is gone?
If I stay here, they will hang me. Angus will make sure of that. He will tell them that I tried to kill him. He will tell them that I killed my own sister, that I drowned her. He’ll pretend that he saw it all. And they’ll hang me.
And there’s an appeal in that thought. A relief.
I close my eyes, and some voice inside me, that might be hers, might be mine, whispers, No.
I don’t want to live without her. But mine is the only life we have, now.
I walk to the open door of the chapel, the thin slash of grainy light.
Angus is limping along the barrier, clutching his head. The moon emerges from behind a scarf of cloud. He must be bleeding heavily. Even from here, I can see the gleam of his blood, which forms a trail away from the chapel.
I step outside. A breeze shoves into me, gathering around me, pulling me from the building. For a moment, it is next to me, full of fury, urging me on.
If I had her with me, we would leave the chapel now, and we would stalk Angus along the barrier. We would watch him trip and stumble along. He would turn and see us following him and would walk faster. I imagine the fear squirming inside him. I know, as all women do, how fear can turn your muscles to water, how terror can twist your gut, rise into your throat and choke the breath from you.
Every woman understands that fear of the dark, fear of being followed, the white-eyed hysteria that makes your heart – your poor, startled-rabbit heart – leap uselessly in your chest. There is no point in running because you will always be too slow, and your heart knows that.
We know the dry-mouthed chase in the darkness. We know how the story ends.
But the fear will be fresh and unfamiliar to Angus. He is a man – rich, strong, young, handsome. Every day of his charmed life, the world has opened up to him, like the split in a ripe peach. He could smash it or devour it or leave it to rot. Whatever he wished.
But not now. Not at this moment, as he trips and staggers, bleeding, across the barrier, with a nightmare creature chasing after him.
I am not a woman to him now: I am some age-old monster. I am a selkie, risen from the deep to rip out his heart. I am the Nuckelavee, stepping from the water in my fleshless bones.
I will run up behind him, my body strong, my hands bloody.
I will push him, hard, and I will watch him fall from the barrier.
I will hear his cry cut short as his head hits the rocks.
I will stare at the blood seeping from his smashed-egg skull as the water laps at his body.
And I will feel nothing at all.
I will
