But I don’t want the piece of metal any more. It’s done its job and I release it. It thuds against the newly turned earth. The second object I drop lands silently. The thin gold chain is too fine to glint in the darkness of the grave.
I nearly threw it into the sea instead, but I want to know where it is. I want it buried.
‘You don’t need to be scared of him any more,’ I whisper.
I close my eyes and open them, but the grave is still there, the new, dark earth a wound in the ground. After they cover the coffin with soil, the grass will grow. In the spring there will be flowers. It will be summer, then winter. Sunshine and snow and rain. Other deaths, other births. In time, people will forget who, exactly, she was. This will all be a story – something to be told around the fireside, like the tales of the selkies or the Sea Mither or the poor woman from a hundred years ago, who is said to have drowned her lover, but always denied it.
We will never know the truth.
Bess Croy puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘You are welcome to come to our house for tea and a bannock. It’s noisy, with the children, but we’d like to have you.’
Behind her, Marjorie Croy is nodding. ‘You’d be welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘But I’d like to . . . I want to see the other islands. Places we went together. I’d like to . . .’ My voice cracks.
Marjorie nods. ‘I understand. To say goodbye.’
‘Will you be coming to the hospital in Kirkwall? To work?’ Bess asks.
‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘Maybe one day, but I want some time alone first.’
Bess nods unhappily, her face hurt. I’d like to explain to her, but I can’t – not without risking everything.
I walk up to the chapel alone. The sun is dropping now; the light on the walls is gilded. Outside is the statue Cesare had made, of St George defeating the dragon. The dragon, he said, stood for war and St George battled it daily.
‘And one day,’ Cesare had said, ‘there is peace.’
‘There can’t be peace everywhere,’ I’d said.
‘We can hope,’ he’d said, looking at the chapel. ‘We must hope.’
I have to hope.
Now, in my hand, I have the metal heart. Inside the chapel, it is cool. The mattress I slept on is gone and everything is peace and silence once more. No traces of Angus’s blood on the tiles. No hint of everything that happened here. There is only light and beauty.
Between the two halves of the filigreed rood screen, there is a gap in the floor – a dip in the cement that has been chipped and dug out with a piece of metal. It is a hollow in the shape of a heart. As I sat and waited for them to pass judgement on me, I had hewn and scrabbled and dug away at the concrete floor. My fingers are raw and sore and there are bashed edges all along one side of the heart.
I press it into the gap in the concrete. It fits almost exactly, like a key in a lock.
I stand and I force myself to turn and walk away from it. I don’t want to leave it, but I must appear to be content to turn away from the heart.
I have to leave it, for it never belonged to the person I am. It never belonged to Con.
The heart was given to Dot and, as far as everyone knows, Dot is gone. As far as everyone believes, Dot drowned in the storm. Dot is buried in the hillside grave with salt sprinkled on her chest.
And now I must pretend to be Con.
At first I didn’t realize, I didn’t remember. They saw my trousers and they called me Con. All my memories were so foggy that, when they called me by my sister’s name, I answered. I knew that Dot was alive, somehow, somewhere, but I didn’t understand how I could know that. The memories came back slowly.
I remember swimming from the boat, leaving Cesare to get to Con. But the water was a shifting, swirling mass and I couldn’t see her anywhere. I swam to the barriers, where I’d seen her fall in and I dived beneath the waves again and again, reaching out.
Every time I surfaced, I called Con’s name.
Then something below the water grasped my foot. Hands around my ankle. I cried out and then dived down again, one last time.
Con was next to the rocks of the barrier. Relief washed over me and I tugged on her hand. Her body came towards me, but something snagged, keeping her under. It was then I realized that her skirt was caught in the rocks.
My skirt. The skirt she had worn to pretend to be me, so that I could escape with Cesare. I yanked as hard as I could, but she was stuck.
No!
I swam to her face and, pressing my lips against hers, breathed a lungful of air into her mouth. Then, chest burning, I surfaced again, before diving back below the water and pulling on her skirt. The material wouldn’t rip and I couldn’t get her free.
Mind whirring, I swam to her face again, the water battering against both of us.
I went to breathe into her mouth again, but she shook her head. She fought me off, turning away and pushing my hands from her face.
No! I thought. I tried again, but again she pushed me away. She reached out and stroked my cheek. She placed her hand on my chest, just for a moment.
Then she put her hand in mine and I watched as she let the air bubble from her lungs.
No, no, no! I could see what she was going to do. I could see she’d made a decision to
