I feel a hand on my shoulder. When I turn, Bess Croy is standing there, tears in her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. And she pulls me into an embrace.
After she has released me, her mother, Marjorie, puts her arms around me.
‘I’m sorry, my love,’ she says. She holds me away from her, at arm’s length and looks into my eyes. ‘We did you wrong.’
She steps away and then Neil MacClenny is standing there, eyes bright.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. And he touches my shoulder briefly, then moves on to allow the rest of them to come, one by one, to apologize. Artair Flett, Finley Anderson, Moira Burns – even Robert MacRae, who was Angus’s best friend, and always sneered when he saw me.
‘I didn’t know,’ he whispered. ‘I never thought he would have . . . I’m sorry.’
An ache builds in my chest and my throat burns with unshed tears. I hear the word again and again. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
And the voices blur until they sound like a blessing or a prayer, until they echo like the hush of the wings of many birds, travelling south.
They look at me expectantly, and a small part of me wants to rage and rail at them. Of course they should be sorry, but why should I forgive them? Why is it up to me to console them? Forgiveness feels too easy for them, and too heavy a burden to carry – the weight of those words: I forgive you. I don’t know how to say them.
I turn away from them, breathing slowly. I don’t know what to say to these people who want something from me that I can’t give.
Up on the hill, the chapel gleams in the sun. I imagine the light pouring in through the window. The pictures on the walls will gleam with life. And, on the ceiling above the altar, a white dove soars through a bright blue sky.
How does something so beautiful come from such darkness?
The tears are flowing freely now, as I turn back to the people watching me and I force myself to say, ‘Thank you.’
Because building something is hard. Because building something is a choice. Because hope is the only way we can stop the darkness swallowing us. Because people who came from another country have shown me how to find my way home.
And I allow these people – my people – to take my hands as we stand around the grave and we say the Lord’s Prayer. I’m not religious, but I join my voice with theirs.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper to the grave.
All across Europe, bodies are falling from the sky or into the sea, or are being blown high into the air. Every explosion is a name. Every lost life is carved on someone else’s heart. Every death takes more than a single life. It takes memories and longing and hope. But not the love. The love remains.
They let me see her body, yesterday, in the morgue in Kirkwall. I couldn’t make myself go into the chilly room. Seeing her would make it final. Seeing her would make it true. For a moment, my knees buckled. I made myself move forward, one shaky step at a time, like a child learning to walk – although even then I’d had her to balance against, walking alongside me.
Her body lay on a cold slab, covered with a sheet. I reached out slowly.
That sheet was the heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted – all the weight of the years between us. Our shared smiles, our tears, the way we woke giggling from the same dreams. My name in her mouth.
Her voice silent now. Her breath stopped.
How can she be gone? It isn’t possible.
I pulled the sheet back and something inside me ripped wide open.
She was pale and still. She might have been asleep. Her skin was like marble under my lips. I kissed her again and again. I held her. Said her name.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I sank to the floor. I wanted to howl, but no sound came from my mouth. Just as after our parents disappeared, I felt unmoored and desperate. The grief felt too heavy to carry by myself, and yet I had never been more alone.
But now, on the hillside, next to her grave, half of Kirkwall stands alongside me: holding my hands, praying with me.
And it makes no difference: she is still gone.
And yet. And yet, it makes all the difference.
Onto her coffin, I drop an old dandelion stalk, left over from the summer. I have always liked the way that dandelions can be two things at once: yellow flowers and then, once they seem to have died, they become balls of white seeds, which can be carried far and wide by the wind. New life, somewhere else.
Every beat of my heart aches in my chest.
One by one, the people from Kirkwall come forward with their grave offerings. Marjorie Croy sprinkles salt over the coffin, and her daughter, Bess, puts in an ear of corn. Mr Cameron drops in a sea stone, and John O’Farrell scatters a handful of peat.
Gifts from land and sea, to help her rest peacefully. Years ago, bodies were bound tightly in sailcloth before being lowered into their graves, to stop the spirit returning to haunt the living. I would give anything for her to haunt me.
After everyone has stepped away from the grave, I drop in two more things. The jagged scrap of metal feels small and insignificant. It is barely longer than my finger, but it is sharp – sharp enough to threaten to cut a man’s throat, and to mean it. Sharp enough to make
