Please.
She breathed in.
The water blurred everything, but I could see her face, faintly – a moment of struggle, of terror, and a final squeeze of her hand on mine.
Then she was still. And everything crumbled. I swam up to the surface and I screamed. The storm carried my cries away. The waves pushed me against the rocks again and again, battering my body against the barrier. A rock hit my head and I nearly fell back into the water, nearly let myself go under. But no. I had to carry on. I had a choice and I had to take it. I worked to get her body free from the rocks. And I pulled my sister from the water.
I don’t remember dragging her to the quarry. It seemed, somehow, that she was with me then. That we were dragging Angus between us. I wanted so much for him to be dead and gone that I imagined his lifeless face. We were glad he was gone, but we knew we would have to pay for his death, somehow.
But I didn’t want Con to be guilty for ever. I wanted her to prove that she was innocent. I wanted her to be free. I wanted her to be able to live, without the shadow of Angus, all those rumours and all the guilt. I just had to find a way to help her to live.
So when they came to take me away, I said to them, ‘I did it. She didn’t do it. It was me.’ And then I stopped being Dot and I told them I was Con.
I walk back to the bothy slowly, to pack up the life we shared. I have given away the chickens and the sheep to people in Kirkwall. I have told them I need some time before I come back – if I come back. They haven’t questioned me too deeply. They are used to Con hiding herself away.
The bothy is cold; the ashes in the grate are grey and dusty. Perhaps someone else will make a home here, one day. I pick up the case that the two of us brought over, a year ago, and I fill it with our clothes: my skirt and her trousers. I’d like to keep something of hers close to my skin.
It is light still outside, and everyone has gone back to Kirkwall. Down the hill, the camp is deserted. I close my eyes, imagining it full of life again. I picture Gino, Marco, Father Ossani. And Cesare. Always Cesare.
The waters around here carry everything north.
Behind me, the chapel is a reminder that there is always hope.
I open my eyes and inhale. Sky and sea and gorse as clean as freshly sawn wood. Uprising sap in the air. For the first time in an age, I am free.
I am free, and it feels like some part of me will always be drowning.
A crow circles overhead, cawing mournfully. Far off, the peregrine calls.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
A sudden crushing in my chest. The years without her will stack up like loose change, uncountable, unending. Everything will remind me of her. Every moment without her will be half lived.
There are some sadnesses too heavy to carry, but still I must keep walking, I must keep breathing. For now, I have to live for the twin souls inside me.
I bundle up my fishing line and lift my case, with its few bits of clothing and food. The place I am going to is not far. If I don’t find him there, I will keep searching. I won’t ever stop searching.
Before I go north, I walk out onto the barrier for the last time – at least for the moment, although I don’t doubt that my feet will bring me back this way one day.
There is a clear path now, all the way to Kirkwall. Anyone who wants to come to this island will be able to walk across the waters. No one is alone any more. That’s just one of the things that war gave us. It crammed all of us together, one way or another.
I look across the water at the things on the horizon that may be gathering clouds or pieces of land and, for the moment, it does not matter which they are. I think over all the old stories and rumours about lost souls and drowned lovers.
I wonder which ones are invented and which ones are the truth. Perhaps this doesn’t matter either. Perhaps it only matters what we believe. And perhaps this is a choice.
I lean over the side of the barrier and I allow my fingers to trail in the water. There is a dark shape below me. In the past, we used to think monsters lived in the sea, and so it may be. But there are monsters on the outside too, in the real world, walking among us in their human skins. And there are the monsters within us that we will never show to another soul, that we will hide even from ourselves.
And then there are the things we leave behind for the people who follow us: the stone tombs and the stories. The pieces of metal buried in the earth. The chapel on the hillside and the tale of how it was made.
The sun comes out from behind the cloud and the outline of a shadow emerges in the water next to the barrier. It is my own reflection but I can see so many faces in it: I see my parents, my sister, myself. I have a single life to live for all of us.
Out in the bay are the shadows of the long-dead ships from past wars. Our mistakes are everywhere; the skeletons of our past ghost us daily. We can only try to stay
