one of them muslin strips around me head, knotting it tight shut. And then I opens, first one eye, then the other, and the world looks all covered in snow through me hideycloth.

            ‘Are ye eyes good and covered up, Fiadh?’ Ma shouts.

            ‘Yes Ma, they is. I just done it.’

            ‘And is that hideycloth tied tight fer sure?’

            ‘Yes, Ma, I done that too.’

            Dishes clatter, then heavy footsteps that sound on creaking floorboards. I tilt me face upwards to the small window, try to catch the lights again. Then the curtain draws across and Ma’s there.

            ‘What are ye waiting fer then?’ she snaps. ‘Get washed and get on moving. Clean ye dress an all today, Fiadh, ye stink of manure.’

            I do? I raise me arm and sniff, and sure, it smells of honest hard work.

            ‘From that great hole I dug yesterday, Ma,’ I say. She had me to it all day long.

            Dig a great hole she said.

            How big I said.

            Big enough for ye, if yer don’t shut yer mouth, she said. The earth was soft and the sides kept falling in, but I kept on at it.

            ‘Yer sure that hideycloth’s on proper?’ Ma asks again and I nod, then she squawks in dismay.

            ‘Just look at the state of that bedspread - have yer seen it?!’

            ‘No, Ma.’ Last thing I remember seeing is nothing, on account of being too tired to do anything except climb into bed and sleep.

            But I look now. It’s filthy ain’t it, all smeared with dried-up mud. And me dress and streaky brown feet too, and saint’s arse! There’s crusty dirt wedged all under me toenails, shedding little flakes of dirt onto the floor.

            Careful not to draw more on Ma’s anger, I fold up the bedspread and put it to one side, then tug the underblanket from the straw mattress that holds in me bed stuffing. Bits poke all out from it when I pulls the blanket away, so I pushes all the sticky out bits back in and make it smooth as can be again. Then I bundles up the bedding in me arms and barefoot pad to the back door.

            ‘Where’s Nalwen this morn?’ I ask Ma. She’s not sweeping at the hearth or scraping dishes at the basin. I look out the door. She’s not pinning clothes out back neither.

            ‘She’s washing herself an’ all,’ says Ma.

            ‘Bit early fer Nalwen,’ I says and Ma nods, passing a basket of clothes into me already full arms.

            ‘Aye, but today’s a day fer looking nice, what with it being the last day of spring and summer on her way.’

            The water’s edge ain’t far. Hiking the basket against me hip, I strides over mossy soft ground that springs under me feet. On wet days it oozes water all over me toes and I stays and wiggles awhile. With the hideycloth always covering up me eyes, I feels more. It’s nice, except for when sharpy stones and twigs poky stick in me feet.

            Beachpath is next, with pebbles and sand and stingy thistles that reach out from the edges like witch’s fingers. I’m always careful to stay in the middle so as not to get scratches upon me bare legs. Stone animals line the way along this path. Mostly old ones from when I was a small’un, but there’s a few that are newer. I don’t like ‘em one bit. I pass Hare and Frog, then Fox and Badger, touching each one careful on its head as I go. There’s no touching Dog or Seagull or Fawn though, it hurts me tummy otherwise, like I’ve swallowed down a huge lump of sad.

            After Beachpath, there’s big smooth rocks to walk and climb across and up and down. On the steep bits, I shuffles down on me backside until I get to the seapool afore the sea. It’s nice and deep for drifting and bathing when the tide goes out, and a washing shelter fer when it’s almost in. Nalwen says it’s nature’s gift, I reckon she’s right on that.

            Nalwen’s there now, laid out across the rocks like a seal sunning itself. Her eyes is closed and her chin pointing right up at the sky. Save fer her shift, she’s skin bare and still glistening from morning dips. Her work dress is laid out beside her, scrubbed clean and dribbling piddles of water down the sleek stones, looking like it’s a whole other person, save without a body inside its brown skirts.

            ‘Washed up already?’ I says, perching aside her on the rock.

            She smiles but her eyes stay closed. ‘Squeaky clean. Ma’s orders. She sent you down to do the same?’

            ‘Aye.’

            ‘Better get to it then, little fish.’

            I’m already tugging at me dress and shift and pulling ‘em off. I loves the sea more than I loves the land. Nalwen props herself up on her elbows to watch. I hop skips along the seapath rocks that lead out to deeper waters, jumping from one to another, laughing when the waters catch at me toes. Then I clambers up big slopey rock at the end and balance high atop it where the winkles cut into me foot a bit. Raising me arms straight above me head, I curl up and over into the waves just like I seen the dolphins do, way out beyond the breakwaters. Straight in I goes and the cold takes me breath away and the salty water shoves itself inside me throat. I swallows it down in one big gulp and it tastes so nice that I swallows another lot too. Then I kicks out underneath the swell of the water and push meself forwards.

            I can swim pretty fast on account of me webbed toes that Nalwen ain't got. ‘Better beware,’ she warned me when she first saw them, ‘folks will think you’re a witch if they see something like that,’ and she pointed to me feet. Silly Nalwen, she didn’t know way back then that me and Ma were already from witches’ stock.

            It's all pretty blue down here with seabubbles fizzing about me head, but I pushes back up to the surface because Nalwen don’t like it when I stays under, even though I can stay down here fer an age. When me head’s up and out the water, Nalwen’s sitting up already, scanning fer me, with her hand shading her eyes. She spots me and I quickly check me hideycloth is still proper on.

            ‘You’re too far out!’ she shouts. She don’t realise how good I can swim neither, fer she always prefers to stay in the seapool. Once, I got her into the sea then had to rescue her straight back, what with all her kickings and screamings that something had hold of her feets and was pulling her down. ‘You is a silly thing,’ I said. ‘It’s just them roots on the bottom tickling at yer pinkers.’

            ‘No Fiadh,’ she said. ‘Roots don’t have claws.’

            ‘Find that claw monster?’ she asks now, when I pulls meself up and out onto the rocks. I smiles at her joke, hair sticking around me face like bits of seaweed.

            ‘Naw. I reckon he’s sleeping at the bottom, waiting on yer coming back.’

            Nalwen shudders. ‘He’ll be waiting a long time then. Here, I’ll do that.’ She gathers me dress and shift off the rock, and a bar of tar soap that she’s brought along fer the scrubbing, then kneels over by one of the shallower pools. ‘Pass the bedspread as well, please. Did you bathe in mud, Fiadh? This dress is filthy!’

            I toss it over and flop down into the place where Nalwen just was. The rock feels toasty from where her skin’s warmed it up extra nice. I rest me head back and listen awhile to the sound of her scrubbings back and forth, and the gulls making their screeches overhead. Once, it was just me and Ma and it was a bad hard time forever, but then Ma brought Nalwen along to be me best friend and I’ve liked it mostly fine since then.

            ‘Will yer tell me the story of when yer first came here?’ I turn me head to Nalwen but keep me eyes closed under the hideycloth. I like listening to her describings. She don’t answer straight away, just sighs through her nose a bit.

            ‘I don’t want to talk about it today.’

            ‘Because of yer real family, way back home?’ I ask and peep an eye open to look at her.

            Nalwen nods. ‘Because of them.’

            ‘But yer grown up now, a stranger to them after all this time. How long’s it been?’

            Nalwen stops scrubbing and looks out to sea. She rubs the back of her hand across her face and wipes it on her dress. I’ve gone and said something wrong with me big mouth. Sitting back on her haunches, she lets me dress float in the pool like a dead fish, then turns to me.

            ‘Since I last saw them? Almost seven years.’

            ‘Seven year is a long time to be looking fer a lost thing.’

            She frowns. I’ve opened me big mouth again. ‘Not lost, Fiadh. Stolen.’ Her voice catches on the last word. Talking about her family makes her weep sometimes. ‘They won’t have forgotten me. I’m going back to them one day.’

            ‘And I’m going too?’

            She smiles and sniffs. ‘I’d never leave you behind, you know that.’

            We tried getting back to her family once, when we was a lot smaller, but Ma caught us pushing the boat off the island and went crazy mad. Turned herself into a big ugly crow and pecked at us hard till we was a right bleeding mess and huddled together, the both of us a pair o’ cowards. We’ve still got scars from when she jabbed her poky beak again and again into our skins. I shudders every time I remembers it. We ain’t never tried going back since but Nalwen still wants another go.

            She fishes me dress out the pool and wrings out the water. ‘We’d better get going or Ma will be after us.’

            ‘Aye.’ I nod, peeling me fresh washed shift over me head and tugging it down. It don’t even reach close to me knees no more, I’ve got that tall. Trying not to shiver at its cold wetness, I lift the basket up against me hip and reach out a spare hand to Nalwen. ‘Friends?’ I ask, and she grabs hold of it and squeezes hard.

            ‘Not friends. Sisters,’ she says, and her saying that warms me heart so much that I can pretend I don’t even feel the cold no more.

*

‘What colour is Nalwen’s eyes?’ Ma asks when I get back to the hut and dump the basket on the mangle.

            ‘Seagreen blue,’ I say.

            Ma tuts. ‘Seagreen is no colour. Sea is blue, grass is green, which one is they?’

            Nalwen’s eyes is both of course. Shallow waters blue with blades of grass, meadow green, that shoot from the middle of her eyes outwards. But Ma don’t want me to say all that. ‘Sea blue, Ma.’

            ‘And her hair?’ Ma asks straight back.

            She’s always asking me like this. Study Nalwen close, every teeny bit o’ her, like drawing a picture, not on parchment but in yer head instead. It has to be exactly right or Ma will start all over again on her questions.

            ‘Crow black like yours Ma, with silky smooth and shine on top.’

            Ma nods, ‘Aye, that’s right, and how long then?’

            I think careful on this one. Nalwen likes to wear her hair wrapped round and round and fat on top of her head by day. At night, she sits by the fire to finger brush and pull out tangles, afore making two long plaits fer sleep time.

            ‘Skirt top long and tucked behind ears.’

            Later, after mangling, I’m pegging clothes and Ma comes by and says, ‘How tall is she then?’

            When Nalwen first came, she was twelve, tabletop tall, everything small, but now?

            ‘All grown up, tall as me, Ma.’

            ‘Sturdy or slender?’

            ‘Slender as that willow tree up Hilltop Glade.’

            Later still, when I’m clambering on me bed and trying to tuck in the fecking corners of me sun-dried sheet, Ma peers through the curtain.

            ‘Can you talk good and posh like her now?’

            Me lips twist and turn while I think about this new question from Ma. ‘Don’t know Ma, Nalwen talks right nice. It’s been tricky hard learning it.’

            ‘Then best keep trying,’ she says, ‘and hurry on up about it.’

            Proper talking is still quite new fer Nalwen and me. We mostly just did whispers before, when we was young’uns, as Ma didn’t want us talking and plotting behind her back she said. And even though nowtimes, she says it’s okay, we both still feel silly scared sometimes.

            ‘Why are you copying what I say?’ Nalwen asked, first time I tried to talk like her.

            ‘Ma says got to,’ I answered, then said what Nalwen just said over again. She waited fer me to finish and put her hands on her hips.

            ‘And why does she want you to do that?’

            I watched her mouth move, her pressed tight lips, her peachy rose pout. ‘Who knows what Ma thinks?’

            Nalwen rolled her eyes. ‘Never trust what Ma thinks, Fiadh. Do you ever think about not doing something she says instead?’

*

I look up from wood picking, the wind has got chills and I shiver a bit. Ma and Nalwen come walking over from the hut and I peer through me hideycloth at them. The cold skirts of me not-quite-dry dress clings to me legs, causing the type of cold that gets into skin and bones and makes cold happen all day. Is they not doing chores?

            Ma shouts and it carries on the wind. ‘I came to show Nalwen what yer been busy diggin’. She holds her hand up against her eyes, squints against the light. ‘Where is it, that great big hole of yers then?’

            I wait till they’re both aside me. ‘Picked a good spot, Ma. Figure it’ll be good fer growing beets or roots. Lots of sun.’ I take off striding along Meadowpath and waves at them to follow on after me. Then we walks around to the far side of the hut where East Field is and the sun shines most all day, and there it is. A great big hole that I stood in up to me neck and dug and dug. I roll me shoulders. They is aching today fer sure.

            Ma whistles. ‘That’s a fine hole you dug there, Fiadh girl. Don’t yer agree, Nalwen?’

            ‘Must have taken a long time,’ Nalwen says and I nod.

            ‘How deep do ye think it is, Nalwen?’ Ma says and Nalwen steps up to the edge of the hole and peers down.

            ‘Four, maybe five feet?’ she says and Ma grunts in agreement. ‘What will you grow in it?’ she says, turning to me. ‘It’s awful deep for vegetables.’

            I come closer to the hole. ‘Can’t say yet. Is fer Ma to decide.’

            Ma has stepped away to peer at the sun. ‘Potatees might do well here,’ she says, ‘or carrots mebee.’ Nalwen and I both look down. I know she is thinking the same as me. A big pot of stew on the stove and warmed up, full-up bellies, that’s what’ll come from this hole. I’m glad I dug it.

            Ma pushes at me hard, as if to shove me in, and then pulls me back all at the same time. I squeals out loud and stumbles against Nalwen, who turns from the hole to me, gripping onto me arms and helping me balance. Her face is right up close in my face, her mouth a popped oh of surprise. And then Ma grabs at the back of me hideycloth and yanks it down around me neck and oh no, oh no, oh no, me eyes are out and I squint it’s so bright they hurt and Nalwen’s seablue green eyes are round and shocked as she looks right at me and

            ‘No!’ I cry, but it’s too late. She’s froze cold

            and the light is going out in her gaze

            and her eyes has gone all starey

            and her skin is draining colour, from her fresh peachy glow to a mucky silt

            and all I can do is watch Nalwen,

            from the top of her head to her toes, turn icy grey.

            ‘Nalwen,’ I whimpers and Ma cackle laughs.

            ‘See what ye done now child. Turned Nalwen into a block of stone, ye foolish girl!’

            And then she steps forward and shoves Nalwen, who topples back, a great lump, straight into the big fecking hole, and it’s a perfect fit.

            A perfect grave.

            ‘Pull ye hideycloth up girl, make ye blind again,’ Ma says.

            I should turn me stone-cold eyes on Ma and fecking turn her -

            ‘Fiadh,’ Ma warns, ‘pull the cloth up now afore I make ye!’

            I spit on the floor beside Ma’s feet. ‘Ye made me dig that fer Nalwen?’

            ‘Ye don’t know what’s good fer yer,’ she says, but she’s wrong, I do. Nalwen down there in that hole - she was good fer me, good and true enough to be a sister.

            ‘Ye’ll thank me for it one day, when ye understands,’ Ma says and I don’t want to hear it. She picks up the shovel from the dug-up earth I left beside the hole. ‘Of stoney eyes ye must beware, death is in her basilisk glare,’ she mutter sings, and dumps a clod of earth straight on Nalwen’s chest.

            ‘That’s a stupid song and ye knows it!’ I shouts at her. The clouds above me burst and start crying on me face, little fat droplets of more bleeding cold.

            ‘Take one last look,’ Ma says, ‘and stick Nalwen’s face on yer memory, fer one day soon ye’ll be needing it.’

            It’s like all other sound stops except fer the rain pattering on me head and the breathing heavy in me chest, the air all slithering from it and wrapping itself around me neck, squeezing tighter and tighter.

            ‘I’ll not never do it,’ I hiss at her.

            Ma grunts and shifts impatiently. ‘Ye’ll have no choice girl. These things has to be, whether ye like it or no.’ She drops the shovel at me side. ‘Now fill her in and stop yer whingeing,’ she says, ‘and best get to it afore dark.’ Ma sniffs. ‘And I ain’t staying to watch yer snivelling and fretting neither, I thought I’d made yer stronger than that.’

            Then she shrugs her dress off her shoulders and it pools on the floor around her boots. One moment, Ma’s legs are in me sight and then they’re not. All I hears is a little suck of air where her body disappears and then the flapping of her wings off into the sky. Crowbound. I look up as she’s disappearing over the far hilltop, flapping and cawing as she banks against the wind. I picks up her dress and hurls it after her.

            Seven year past of braiding Nalwen’s long hair. Seven year of holding hands and looking out to sea at what’s beyond. Seven year of me and her against fecking Ma who I don’t reckon has any heart left in her chest.

            No more making crowns o’daisies

            or jumping streams

            or laughing over yellow buttercups that tickle under chins

            No more.

            I slide down into the hole, get me arms wrapped tight around Nalwen’s hard body and pull, grunting till I’ve leant her upright against the muddy sides. Then I stroke her rock-hard face with both hands and try not to cringe at the feel of it, all grit and chisel and flint. ‘She wants yer buried,’ I say, ‘but I won’t do it.’

            The rain starts to come down harder, turning the skies a thick grey. I clambers up out the hole and get meself onto hands and knees behind Nalwen and try to lift her, but it don’t work. With all me strength, I can’t even move her one tiny inch, she’s too heavy. I wants her back in the hut and tucked up in me bed, not out here in the dark and the rain, all alone. Me knees slip in the mud and I hit the ground hard. Now me newly washed dress is all muddy again with no Nalwen to wash it fer me next time. Thunder rumbles. It hides the sound of me wails as I give up on heaving and curl around Nalwen to stay awhile longer. Then the dark comes on over and I can’t feel the cold and rain no more.

Ludvig Island, Denmark

     Midsummer’s Eve, 1985

The sound of my breath was red.  

            A flame red that pulsed and rattled in the axle of my ribs. Up ahead, Tide House rose solid and familiar against the pinking sky. Just ten steps, and I would be on the porch, and everything would be alright. Ma would know what to do.

            The front door was unlocked, the hallway cool and unstirred. A jazz song spilled from the living room; a woman singing in bottle-green tones. I waited a few seconds, then nudged open the door to the room with my toe.

            Ma was in her chair, one hand dangling a glass of whisky, the other pinching a cigar between thumb and forefinger, her bare feet tapping in time to the beat.

            ‘Ma.’

            She turned. A skipping pause, the cigar freezing halfway to her mouth, the clean crack of the whisky glass as it hit the ground.

             ‘What’s happened?’

            Those green tones building. So green they were almost blue. I wrapped my arms around my torso, for despite the heat, my skin had begun to prickle.

            ‘I did it,’ I said. ‘I killed him.’

Chapter 1

London, now

I know it’s him from the moment the doorbell rings. Forty years on with no warning, and somehow, I still know.

            ‘Katja? You there?’

            I stare mutely at the door. He must have been right behind me, for I have only been in the house a few minutes. The doorbell cracks through the hallway a second time, splitting open the silence.

            ‘You’ve got the wrong house,’ I say in my crispest BBC English. ‘My name is Liz. There’s no Katja here.’ 

            Seconds tick by.

            ‘I know it’s you,’ he replies in Danish. A language both alien and achingly familiar.

            Memories flicker before me, like images in a silent movie; our bodies loose from Tuborg, dancing to Bryan Adams; the clamminess of our skin as we slept side by side; the ghosts that lie between us.

            ‘What do you want?’

            ‘To talk.’

            A series of possible reasons why, after all this time, Henrik Lauridsen now wants to talk flash through my mind, none of them good. I settle on the most obvious: he knows.

            ‘Please,’ he says, more insistently this time, ‘I’ve flown over especially.’

            All my logic tells me not to let him in, yet my fingers are operating on a different system, releasing the chain, clicking the lock open.

He is taller than I remember, his hair flecked with coils of grey, his skin glowing with that windburn you only get on the island. We stand, stiff as cardboard, scanning each other for the younger version of ourselves.

            ‘It’s good to see you,’ he says, his face dissolving in a smile.

            I can’t summon a response. The sight of Henrik on my front doorstep is both wondrous and terrifying. I attempt a smile, but my lips won’t quite obey. Instead, I open the door wider and step to the side.

            His cabin case click-clacks across the floorboards as he follows me into the living room, where his gaze skims the high ceilings, the velvet sofas, settles on the giant canvas above the fireplace, eyes roving the constellation of circles in flamingo pink.

            ‘One of yours I take it?’

            ‘Why are you here?’

            He inhales deeply, as though what he is about to say contains a lot of words, then extracts a duty-free carrier bag from his case and hands it to me. ‘Shall we have a drink first? You might need it…’

            I hesitate a second before taking the bag. Inside is a bottle of warm white wine.

            ‘Wait here,’ I say and traipse down the hallway to the kitchen, hoping he won’t follow. I need a moment to gather myself, to sew up the parts of me that seem to be coming loose at the mere sight of his green eyes.

            My fingers tremble as I reach for wine glasses in the cupboard. I add a couple of ice cubes, then pour hefty measures of wine, taking a swig from the bottle before heading back to the living room. The trick is to remain calm. Not give anything away.

            ‘Is this your daughter?’ He is standing by the bookshelf, pointing to Penny’s graduation photo.

            ‘Penny, yes.’

            ‘Looks like you.’

            Wordlessly I hand him the wine. He takes a sip and eyes me over the rim. We are standing close enough now for me to catch the scent of his skin; woody with a hint of lemon, wafting from the sprinkling of chest hair in the V of his linen shirt. Too close. I perch on the armrest of the sofa, gesturing for him to take the sofa opposite. He hesitates a second, then sinks into the cushions with an old man’s sigh.

            It’s odd seeing him in this room, among my things, the detritus of a life he bears no relation to when at one point he was my whole world. I gulp my wine feeling its warmth circuit my body, releasing Danish words from the back of my brain.

            ‘How did you find me?’

            He studies my face, like he’s still trying to figure me out. ‘I had a hunch Liz Harper might be you. I was on my way to your studio when I saw you leave. Even then, I had to check. So, I followed you. Just to be sure.’

            ‘How did you find my studio?’

            He nods at the canvas above the mantel. ‘There are only three people in the world who do what you do. Did you know that?’

            I blink. Of course. I had forgotten that he knew. That I foolishly told him many years ago when we were sharing secrets in breathy whispers down in the sand dunes.

            ‘A girl in Texas who paints folk music,’ he says, earnestly, as though he is reciting facts from a textbook, ‘and an Irish guy who paints 1980's pop. And that left you. A woman in her fifties. Reclusive. Tall. Claims she’s British, yet looks to me, a lot like someone I used to know. So, you see, it was your, dare I say it, condition that gave you away.’

            ‘It’s not a condition,’ I snap.

            He pulls out his phone and enlarges something on his screen, then holds it up for me to see.

            ‘This is you, right?

            An article from The Guardian headlined: 'Synesthete artist Liz Harper to paint live at the Barbican.'

            He looks triumphant when he sees my face. ‘You know, we had almost given up. But then I remembered. About the colours. And I figured, maybe, just maybe…’

            I level my gaze with his, trying to slow my heart.

            ‘Who’s we?’

            ‘My dad and me. He wanted to see you before he died, but as it was…’ His mouth slackens and he tilts his glass to his lips until the wine has gone.

            ‘Viktor’s dead?’ It takes me a moment to conjure up Viktor Lauridsen. A tall stalk of a man, kindly face, hair the colour of old pennies. ‘When?’

            ‘A few months ago. A stroke. The last of many.’

            ‘I’m so sorry.’

            His eyes meet mine, a beat too long, and all my surety leaks out. I find I don’t know what to do with my arms.

            ‘Seriously, why are you here?’

            He runs a thumb over his lips, sets down his glass, and from the front pocket of his case extracts a cream envelope.

            ‘My dad made me promise to deliver it in person once I found you.’ He slides the envelop across the coffee table. A black stamp across the top reads: Solicitors Sørensen & Paal, Frederikshavn.

            ‘What is it?’

            ‘Open it.’

            I run a finger under the flap, pull out a sheet of paper addressed to a Miss Katja Maibritt Sommer. A gap-toothed girl with sharp elbows and a fringe hanging on a tilt. A girl who no longer exists.

            My eyes skim a paragraph of legal jargon in Danish about the estate of Viktor Frederik Mads Lauridsen, then hook on the words legal beneficiary, and an address: Tide House, Ludvig Island, Denmark.

            ‘I don’t understand.’

            ‘He left it to you. The entire piece of land you rented from us.’

            I reread the letter, going over each word. ‘I give, devise, and bequeath Tide House, twelve wooden cabins, the surrounding land down to the perimeter fence….’

            Everything around me sharpens; the taste of wine on my tongue, the beat of my heart, the ice cube bobbing in my glass. Tide House snags on my eyes like burrs.

            ‘Why didn’t he leave it to you?’

            ‘He said you’d know why.’ His eyes bore into me, and I have to look away.

            ‘No idea,’ I shrug. ‘I haven’t seen your dad since…’ A memory of Viktor unfurls in my mind. Of him on his knees at the water’s edge, the black roar of the tide behind him. He is howling at the sky, unable to get up. That howl. The pitch of it. Pale purple like a corpse. I shake the image from my mind and fold the letter back in its envelope.

            ‘I don’t want it,’ I say. ‘In fact, this isn’t even addressed to my real name, so—’

            ‘A name you got legally?’ He lets the words hang, watching me take them in. ‘Didn’t think so.’

            My fingers find the loose thread on the armrest. There’s no way out of this. 

            ‘What about…’ I stall, swallow, try again. ‘My father.’

            Henrik frowns. ‘What about him?’

            ‘Does he ever come back? To the island?’

            ‘No. At least, not for a long time. Back then, maybe, people said they saw him. I never did. He could be anywhere now.  He could be dead.’

            ‘He’s not dead.’ My words come out too quickly. ‘He lives in a bungalow in Frederikshavn. He’s on Facebook. Different name. But it’s him.’

            Henrik stares at me for a few seconds. ‘Frederikshavn huh? Well, I never. All this time, just across the water…’

            ‘It’s too close for my liking. He can’t find me. Not now. Not after all this time.  I’ll just have to sell it.’ I shift forward in my seat. ‘Why don’t you buy it off me?’

            He grimaces, pulling his neck back, like I have suggested something preposterous. ‘I’ve got the rest of the estate…and you can’t sell it. You just…can’t.’

            ‘I’m selling it, and if you don’t want it, you’ll have a stranger living on those grounds. It’s up to you.’ A glance, quick as anything. ‘What about your daughter?’

            ‘What about her?’

            ‘Why don’t you pass it onto her? Less costly. Less hassle.’

            ‘She doesn’t know. About my life back then.’ I stop myself, considering my words carefully. ‘And she must never know.’

            His chest seems to fold in on itself, like I have winded him. Silence stretches between us, taut as the skin of a drum. There is something heavy and final about the nod he gives me. He leans forward to pull a wallet from his back pocket, giving me a glimpse of his chest hair from his open shirt. I want to both look away and keep looking. He extracts a business card and chucks it on the table.

            ‘Speak to Martin then,’ he says, and his voice has lost all its softness.

            I pick up the card. An address on Ludvig, a mobile number. ‘Martin?’

            ‘Our estate manager. Dabbles in property sales on the side. Best to email him first as he never picks up. He’ll help you sell it. If that’s what you want. Although, I think it’s a mistake…’

            ‘I think it’s for the best.’ I’ve had enough now. Speaking Danish again is draining. The words make sucking sounds at the back of my throat, put spittle on my lips. English is all at the front of the mouth. It requires no effort, no body parts. I want to return to my English life, my English day. A day like yesterday, and the day before. I am Liz Harper. British artist. Living in London.

            ‘I was thinking we could have dinner?’ He adds, trapping his lower lip between his teeth. Such perfect teeth.

            ‘Another time.’

            ‘I fly back tomorrow morning...’

            ‘It’s not a good idea.’

            ‘But…’

            ‘I said no.’ My voice splices the air. Unrecognisable in its sharpness. This is all her. Katja. Piercing my carefully crafted persona like a shard of glass. I clear my throat, smooth a line of sweat from the back of my neck.

            He gives me a silent nod when I decline his invitation to dinner. He has done what he came to do and there is something bigger pressing down on us.

            ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘But I need to digest this.’

            At the front door he hangs back, fiddling with the luggage tag, his lower lip jutting from his chin. ‘I bought one of your paintings.’

            ‘You did? Which one?’

            He doesn’t answer. I know which one, and he knows I know, because of course there is only one painting it could be, one song, its flow and colours etched on my memory for a lifetime.  His hand reaches for me, touches my hair. A simple gesture, but I know what’s coming. Can feel it in the vibrations of the air between us yet am still surprised when he leans in and kisses me. The brief slide of his tongue in my mouth makes a pendulum swing in my belly. Makes something pitch bright blue like a whistle.  He’s out the door and walking down the path to the gate before I can gather my words. Any second now he will be gone from my life again, and the thought seems at once a relief and unbearable. At the gate he turns, and our eyes lock.

            ‘You can fight it all you want,’ he says, ‘but you’re a Tide Woman. Always will be.’ 

            Long after his voice has disappeared, the trail of it lingers in my head. A faint blue glow hovering in the darkness behind my eyelids, just beyond my grasp.

            ‘Ruby, it’s me. Harper. I’m a police officer. Remember? I’m a friend of your mummy.’

            Needs must. It wasn’t a complete lie. No answer.

            ‘Ruby, my name’s Harper. I came to see your mummy. Remember?’

            Silence. Sunrise was still a few hours away, but its light was just beginning to touch the black-blue of the night sky with the promise of a new day.

            Harper made a decision.

            ‘I’m coming up. There’s nothing to be afraid of.’

            She picked her way up the iron steps of the slide. They were made for feet much smaller and more agile than hers, and she lost her footing more than once.

            ‘Ruby?’

            Still no sound.  Harper reached the top and crouched low, guiding her torch carefully under the canopy of the slide just enough and not too much. She smiled as the beam sought her out. Ruby Walsh, aged three and three-quarters, was fast asleep. Then she saw the blood. It was the rabbit pyjamas. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. The innocence of them, spoiled by the bloom of blood which had spread upwards from the hems of the pyjama legs turning the white fleece material into a rainbow of gore: reds, crimson, rose, and finally baby pink as it had seeped and soaked higher and higher up her legs. 

            Her daddy’s blood.

            It was an anonymous call that had alerted the police. Gunshots heard over the Monkwood estate, a nearby patrol car checked it out and had found the girl. She was standing, stock still, blood still pooling around her feet from her daddy, slumped in the doorway where he’d been shot. Her mummy was cradling the gun. It was as if the arrival of the police had broken some sort of spell that had held them all together in a macabre tableau. The child had run then. No shoes on her feet. Pell-mell through the estate. Been missing almost nine hours before Harper had found her in the playground. 

            Harper wriggled free of her jacket and used it to cover the girl’s sleeping form before squeezing in beside her. She knew she should call it in but she looked down at the resting face and her hand involuntarily reached in to touch her cheek. A fissure she thought long-healed opened up in her chest, and she felt the hollow of it. She lifted the child’s head and gently laid it on her lap. At that moment, a toy rabbit tumbled forward, one lop ear stained red. She stared at it, and then again at the sleeping girl, and willed her to sleep some more, full in the knowledge that once she woke, the terrible events of the night would come flooding in and sleep would be no more.  

#

‘Where've you been?’

            DCI Russ Carter tapped his watch and raised his eyebrows at Harper as she walked towards him, carrying her small bundle. She shook her head to stop any more questions and hoped that would be enough. For now. He nodded, and as he did, a thick strand of his trademark slicked-back hair flopped forward so it hung before his eyes, and Harper was struck momentarily at the sight of him ruffled, undone, but just as quickly, he shook his head, brushed the strand back into place, and the moment was gone.

            The sky was a dun grey now, the sun yet to appear and every light at Number 7 Monkwood Drive glared, picking it out like a ghost ship riding the gloom of the twilight of the morning.  A tent had been hurriedly erected around the front door. She knew the girl’s mum, Chrissie Walsh would be long gone; discovered wide-eyed, speechless, slumped against the radiator in the front room of the house, a gun in her lap. Her father gone too. Dead on arrival.

            Harper placed Ruby carefully on the ground. The child’s large dark eyes stared up at her.  Behind her, a woman she presumed was from Family Services was hovering, her face all raised eyebrows and a fixed smile. Let her wait, Harper thought. Someone handed her a child's coat. It was a navy duffle with horn toggles. She kneeled to face Ruby to help her into the coat and carefully pushed the toggles through their leather fasteners, counting each one out loud as she did so. She took the toy rabbit from her pocket and wiggled its paw at Ruby in greeting before taking it and pushing it down deep inside the girl’s coat.

            ‘For safekeeping,’ she whispered.

            Ruby nodded.

            ‘Now, this lady will look after you.’

            ‘Mamma. Mamma..Mamma?’

            ‘Your mamma is being looked after too.  Everything will be okay. I promise.’

            And she meant it. Harper grabbed Ruby's hand and led her to the waiting woman. She stood to the side and lit a much-needed cigarette as the woman fussed and organised. She inhaled deeply. It had been a long night. As she watched the woman from Family Services steer the child towards the waiting car, the girl turned and sought out Harper with those big dark eyes and held her in her gaze. It felt like a plea. And at that time, in that place, on that first night of her first murder investigation, the newly appointed Detective Constable Harper Jones made a silent pact with that small, lonely child that she would leave no stone unturned to uncover the truth and see justice done.

Chapter One

Twenty-Three Years Later

Harper

DS Harper Jones crossed the kitchen to pick up her mobile phone that was skittering across the worktop, buzzing and pulsing with light.  She knew exactly what that meant. The target was on the move. She checked the clock. 6.45 am now. He was up and out early. No change there. She knew he liked his early mornings. She monitored it half-heartedly for a few minutes, reaching automatically to flick on the kettle, pull out a cup, and throw in a tea bag. And then she stopped in her tracks. It was Thursday.  The target lived an unremarkable life. Harper knew his habits by now.  He lived alone in a small cottage at the far end of a hamlet in the southern Lakes and rarely used his car to go much further than the supermarket in the nearest town.  And he never used his car on a Thursday. On Thursdays he joined the lunch club in the parish hall in the neighbouring village. And he always walked.

                   She watched the dot indicating his old Citroen hatchback bounce on the small B roads heading out and away from his home. Where was he going? Supermarket or maybe the friend he visited every three or four months or so up in Whitehaven. She scoured the large AA map looking for some familiar name places. He passed the turn-off for his friend. It looked as if he was heading for the motorway. She estimated it would take him more than an hour. The top speed of his car was probably around sixty miles per hour, if that, and he was a careful driver. If she was lucky, he would go south, heading in her direction and she could pick him up with ease. But if he went north, well, she couldn’t risk it. Not only would she be ninety minutes behind him, but the region was notorious for its patchy network connection, and she could easily lose the signal. She had to get going. She made herself a flask of coffee, hastily threw some snacks in a bag, and was nosing her car out onto the main road within ten minutes.

            It had been a burning sense of injustice that had led her to keep tabs on Father Gabriel Bell. That, and a strong desire to know what his life had become away from Monkwood and all that had happened there. Powerful emotions both, and she had no plan, no idea what she might achieve or where it might lead. Working down in the Central Police Archives while on secondment to the National Crime Agency, her curiosity had got the better of her. She could see herself now, looking over her shoulder as she rifled through the card index system to locate the file. Row L, shelf 9. The word Monkwood was only just legible now, scrawled in a long-forgotten hand across the top of the brown Fellowes Archive box. The first thing she saw when she lifted off the lid was the official head and shoulders photograph of her old boss, DCI Russ Carter. Tiny spots of adhesive still clung to each corner where it had been pulled away from the Who’s Who wall.  Someone must have thrown it in the Monkwood archive for want of anywhere else to file it.  Fitting really. And that was all it took for the feelings of loss and unfairness to come flooding forth from wherever she had tried to subdue them. That and the guilt, of course. Always the guilt.

            She’d got the idea for the tracker from a private detective she’d dated (briefly). Another ill-match from that soulmate site that had promised so much and yet always seemed to underwhelm in the suitability stakes. Though that one date alone was worth the yearly membership fee she’d been meaning to cancel every year for the last three years just for the tracking idea. Thank goodness she didn’t stick around long enough for him to gain any pleasure in knowing that.

            Fr Gabriel had moved away from the parish of Monkwood in the intervening years. He was now leading some Christian community up in the Lakes. That’s how she had stumbled across him. An accident. She hadn’t thought about him in years. But on her way back from a training course in Leeds - yet another - she found herself crawling along in the teatime traffic on what passed for the main road between Leeds and Skipton.  A brightly coloured poster tied to a church railing caught her eye, and she saw the name Father Gabriel of the Grassdale Community and wondered what if. Four hours later, she wondered no more. It was him. She had planned the fitting of the tracking device with a precision that quite frankly scared her. She was getting her mojo back. Shame the boss wasn’t here to see it.

            She pulled into the first motorway services and checked his direction. He was minutes away. She waited with bated breath to see which direction he would take. She prayed he would head south towards her, giving her a chance to pick him up. He went north. She offered up a silent prayer to the traffic gods for a clear road and drove as fast as she dared to the next service station. She pulled in and checked his location. He’d left the motorway. He was travelling across country. She had to turn round and retrace her steps.  It was then she saw the sign for the A66. It was the best route towards the northeast and Yorkshire, and if that was his direction of travel, he would have to pick it up sooner or later.

            She’d eaten up twenty miles or so before she felt confident enough to pull into a parking place and check Fr Gabriel’s progress. She sat and watched the dot pulsate across her screen and was rewarded with the sight of his little car up ahead of her. She was now less than ten minutes behind him. Harper smiled to herself. She could allow herself that small luxury at least. And then her petrol light came on.

            She overtook him on the dual carriageway, keeping her head down just in case. She watched his car recede in her rearview mirror until it was out of sight and then put her foot down and headed for the nearest services. She pulled a beanie hat down over her head against the bite of the north wind before filling up the tank with petrol. She was just leaving the toilet facilities when she spotted his small car pulling onto the garage forecourt. Her heart caught in her chest, and she kept her eyes down as she wound her way back to her car. She watched him from the safety of the driver's seat, giving thanks for this small out-of-the-way service station, not much more than the size of a garage, and edged with trees, where she could park up and take him in unseen. 

            It was over twenty years since the Monkwood investigation. More than two decades since she’d seen him this close-up, and she felt the shock of it. She had to acknowledge he had lost much of his presence away from the streets of Monkwood or the theatre of a church. Maybe it was her, perhaps she had grown up, but he looked almost ordinary. There was no swagger when he walked, though he still carried himself tall, and that mane of hair of which he had been so proud had gone. ‘Tamed’ was the word that rushed unbidden into her head, and she smiled to herself and rolled her eyes, batting away the very idea of it. He placed a hat on his head and, muffled against the cold, he filled his car with petrol looking very much like Everyman on a journey.

            Unanswered questions from those grim months spent in Monkwood two decades ago broke through the carefully constructed dam she had built. His presence, just across the tarmac, unseated her. It opened her up. She realised that now and, in that realisation, she reached out tentatively, feeling her way around the edges of the reality she had created for herself, looking for a finger hold. There was none. The death of her DCI, Russ Carter had never been satisfactorily explained. Accidental death had been the ruling. But she had been there that night, and she instinctively knew that what had happened was no accident. That made two murders in Monkwood. Both investigations stalled by the sheer lack of evidence and a community that thwarted them at every step. And here he was before her now.  The man at the centre of it all. The man who had controlled everything. Every obfuscation. Every dissembling. The priest in charge of Monkwood. Well, it might be two decades ago, but here she was too.  Timing was everything. ‘Better late than never Russ,’ she said out loud to her dead boss. This time it was going to be different. This time it would be on her terms. This time she would be in charge.

Chapter Two

Twenty-Three Years Later

Ruby

Ruby pushed herself upright in bed. It took her a few moments to register her surroundings, and then she buried herself up to her chin in the quilt and concentrated on the objects around her: book, mirror, clock, glass, bookmark, necklace. She recited purposefully what she could see in front of her to steady her breathing as she’d been taught.  It always had this effect on her, being back in the home where she was raised.

          She should get up, start the day. But she was putting it off. She knew as soon as she placed one foot down on the floor that the day, or rather this day, would come rushing in, and there would be nothing she could do to stop the clock.

          The doorbell rang and Luke simultaneously banged on the door and shouted through the letterbox. ‘Hey it’s me! Sorry! I left my keys on the table!’

          She smiled, despite the interruption and what it meant and then threw back the quilt, swung her body to the edge of the bed, and planted her feet one by one purposely on the old rag rug below, and prepared to let in the day.

            ‘Oh,’ he said, his hand gripping the newel post. ‘It’s you.’

            ‘Yes… only me.’ I said, my shoulders pressed to the wall.

            ‘I’m ready to go,’ he said unnecessarily – I could see he was already dressed in a smart summer raincoat I didn’t yet recognise, a new Danish-looking back-pack slung over one shoulder. Despite his great height, the wide span of his rower’s shoulders, Joe slipped towards the front door as delicately as a mime artist, so close to the wall, you couldn’t slip so much as an envelope between them. Deep in my pocket, my fingers tightened around sharp keys, as I fought the urge to reach out and touch.

            He eyed the door.

            ‘Nice weekend?’ I heard myself ask in a shrimp-sized voice.

            Briefly, he lifted his blue eyes to me, but they held barely a glimmer of recognition and the rest of his face remained cloaked and unreadable. I shrank further into the wall, felt the bite of the dado-rail in the s-bend of my spine.

            ‘Charlie’s having his nap,’ he said, tilting his chin towards the ceiling, indicating the whereabouts of our child’s bedroom, in case I might have forgotten its location over the last three days. ‘I’ll be back on Thursday at five, as stipulated.’ He sighed. ‘As you stipulated.’

            ‘I didn’t …’ I tried again. ‘I mean, you don’t always have –’

            A flicker of panic crossed his brow, then his hand reached up towards the Yale lock. Moments later he was gone.

            Through the frosted glass panels of the front door, I watched his pixelated shape retreat down our garden path. There was purpose in his silhouette, he had somewhere to go, things on his mind. When Joe turned left onto the street and disappeared out of sight, Wilf – his amnesia seemingly forgotten – pushed his wet, marron glacé nose into my hand.

            ‘Come on,’ I whispered. He cocked his head, then turned to take the stairs, two at a time.

            Charlie’s bedroom was filled with warm, powdery light, the blue dinosaur curtains swaying in the afternoon breeze. My baby slumbered on, his long black lashes fluttering in private dreams, the round curve of his pillowy cheek resting against Rabbit. I lifted his wrist, weighed his small hand in mine; his fingers unfurled like waving sea coral and I bent to kiss the curl of his palm. I gazed at the solid certainty of his sleeping form – one arm thrown up behind his tousled head like a sun-bather, his plump, bare legs akimbo.

            Covering him with the duvet, I backed out of the small bedroom, making a swift inventory as I left – the tidily stowed wooden train-set in the clear plastic box, the pile of shirts and dungarees neatly folded on the painted chest. Small, everyday tasks now performed by Joe.

            From across the landing, the lure of the marital bedroom pulled. I stood on the threshold, eyes sweeping the room for a sign, however small, of Joe’s occupation – a forgotten cufflink, an abandoned bottle of cologne – a stolen keepsake to sustain me for a few more days. But he had cleared it with forensic exactitude and it felt as crisply anonymous as a hotel room, ready to welcome new guests. The bed was made – as stipulated – with clean white sheets, the knife-pleat edges mocking me with their monastic austerity.

            I raced to the bathroom, pulling at the lid of the rattan laundry basket, upending it on the white tiled floor, frantic as an urban fox searching for scraps; I seized scattered armfuls of crumpled linen, pulling them up to my face, heaving draughts of stale laundry into my lungs, desperate to locate the dissipating traces of my husband; I moved quickly, stripping the freshly-made bed at speed, expertly refolding along ironed creases, before remaking it with rumpled sheets and crumpled pillowcases.

            My clothes dropped to the floor, I slipped between the covers, pulling the white linen up over my head, enshrouding my naked body in the same sheets that had earlier brushed against his. I breathed him in, held the departing whisps of vetiver and sandalwood at the back of my throat, the soapy hints of shaving foam; I drew deeper, caught the intoxicating scent of sweat, of office, of his West End commute. Just as I did every other Monday.

1 Liv

January – Six months earlier

Do you want to know what the traditional prize for ten years of marriage is?

            It’s tin.

            Tin?

            I felt the flimsy weight of the word float out across my kitchen table.

            Was this a joke?

            Round-eyed, I scrolled at speed across other anniversary websites, ignoring helpful suggestions for camping kettles and pewter tankards, while my mind skipped unhelpfully to all things tinny – baked beans, upholstery tacks, tin-nittus.

            Unbidden, a new word arrived.

            Ear.

            The wordsmith in me spliced them together. Tin-ear.

            Was this to be expected? Did all spouses stop listening around the ten year mark? Or just mine? 

            I should probably mention that my family has form. Anniversaries make me skittish. But not in a good way.

*

Ten years ago, on the morning of my winter wedding, my parents decided to end their thirty-five year marriage. Unsurprisingly, they opted to keep the news to themselves.

            ‘Ready Livvie?’ my father said, slipping my arm through the reassuring crook of his elbow, in an unexpectedly formal gesture, as he shepherded me up the snow-covered steps of Marylebone Registry Office.

            After the ceremony, the sun emerged for the photographs, a crystalline light suddenly bouncing in all directions. Those pictures, displayed on our kitchen dresser, tell their own story: I’m smiling into the camera, smiling up into Joe’s beautiful face, the hem of my green velvet dress trailing over dustings of snow and I’m glittering in my happiness.

            When my father kissed me goodbye on the pavement outside our small, but improbably expensive reception at Soho House, he allowed me believe that those incipient tears, glistening in his hazel eyes, were meant for me, his only child, about to flee the nest. I should have thought more carefully: I was, after all a professional woman, and had been living independently of my parents for close to a decade. But that’s what weddings do – they cast a spell, weave their magic and reduce sensible people to misty thinking. Perhaps he’d been crying at the eye-watering cost.

            ‘We didn’t tell you…’ he’d said later, after Joe and I had returned, tanned and infatuated, from our first and only winter-sun holiday. ‘Because…’ He cast his sad eyes around the tables of the forlorn Queen’s Park café he’d chosen. ‘Because…’ he repeated, pressing his lips together till they paled. ‘We didn’t want to spoil your day.’ He reached for my hand across the table. I wasn’t sure who was comforting whom.

            ‘But Dad, why...? After thirty five years? Why now?’

            A tremor of something close to guilt travelled across his face. He dropped his head, so all I could see was the still abundant hair, now salted with grey.

            ‘Dad?’

            With a sigh that made him seem older than his fifty nine years he looked up and we locked eyes. ‘Your mother…let’s just say… your mother is quite an exacting person. Sorry… but could we leave it at that? Things will settle, darling. They always do.’

            My parents might not have spoilt our wedding day, but they’d done something strange to our wedding date. January 19^th had taken on the hint of taint, like fresh milk in a pottery jug, left in a shaft of sunlight.

            And here we were again, early January in London – bare-fingered branches laced against the afternoon sky, darkening days pitiless in their brevity, and our tenth wedding anniversary hurtling towards us.

 *

A small, despotic potentate in his IKEA Dolfin high-chair, Charlie sat at the head of the table, brandishing two cocktail sausages, his orb and sceptre, one in each hand.

            ‘No onge,’ he decreed, before sealing his plump rosebud lips against my spoon of pureed carrots.

            ‘Give up Mum – he’s not hungry,’ said Silas, loping around the edges of the kitchen, reaching into the depths of the dryer for his football stocks, filling his sports bottle from the tap. I sat back, enjoyed watching him; he had his father’s grace, the same easy movements. Swiveling on his heel, he stretched out a long arm across the table, and deftly removed a sausage from his small brother’s grasp.

            ‘Snooze you lose, Charlie,’ said Silas, his grin widening, before swallowing them down whole.

            ‘Hey!’ I flicked at him with a tea-towel.

            He danced away like a boxer, chuckling, confident in his position as team leader, before leaning down to plant a passing kiss on my cheek.

            ‘Night Mum. Don’t forget, I’m staying over at Lars’s.’

            ‘Wait!’ I stood up, straightened my back and made an attempt to look assertive. ‘You promise me that’s where you’ll be?’

            Silas was already well over six foot, but that extra inch of cushioned Nike, plus two more inches of stiffly gelled and abundant chestnut hair, meant the hierarchy between us was shifting. No longer able to look him directly in the eye, I rested my hand on his powerful forearm. ‘Say promise?’

            He raised one eyebrow, before bending down to retie his lace. ‘By the way,’ he said. ‘What time’s Dad back?’

            ‘Um…’ I began, inwardly wincing. ‘He isn’t, he has to stay on. Remember?’

            He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

            ‘Hong Kong. He’s in Hong Kong until Tuesday,’ I said, as gently as I could. Joe’s whereabouts were a constant source of mystery to Silas. A mystery, he no longer bothered to solve.

            ‘Oh, yeah…’ He stared over my shoulder, out towards the garden, before dropping his gaze, to tie his trainer with careful intensity, lace over lace, as if he were still a small child. ‘So, he’s not coming to my match?’ he asked with casual nonchalance.

            I shook my head. ‘No, I’m sorry, he isn’t. He can’t.’

            Isn’t. Can’t. And always me who rushed to say sorry.

            They hungered for the other parent, the glamorous one, the one who sashayed in from the airport, jacket slung over his shoulder, sweeping them into his arms, thrilled to be back home. They basked in his return, like baby seals, barking around him in delight.

            ‘Well, in that case,’ he said, with forced brightness. ‘Any of you guys want to come and watch? Gimme a lift back, bus takes ages?’

            Maisie, seated quietly at the other end of the table, her biscuit-coloured hair shrouding her science work-sheet, looked up suddenly. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I’m coming. You can count on me.’

            At seven years old, Maisie had mastered many talents – cartwheels, counting to one hundred in French – but she had not, as far as I knew, obtained her UK driving licence.

            My heart sang and my heart sank. Maisie’s fierce protective love for her much older brother was a constant source of joy to me – but a school football match, in freezing temperatures, was not part of my carefully calibrated Saturday. My thoughts drifted to my straining deadline, the nine hundred word article for the London Standard – still nothing more than a vague outline in a reporter’s notebook, lying neglected on my studio desk.

            But Maisie was way ahead of me.

            ‘Is Lars playing?’ she asked with a quick, sideways glance.

            Lars, Silas’s best friend, but also Maisie’s number one crush; the modest ten year age gap only adding to his allure.

            ‘Yup, mid-field.’

            ‘Definitely, we’re coming, aren’t we?’ she added, turning her gummy smile towards me, recruiting me to her plan.

            Truth was, sixth-form matches terrified me. Not the boys, but the fathers. At the end of last term, standing by a bare-earthed pitch in Whitton, I’d been all but mown down by a bullet-headed father, screaming at his (admittedly, hugely talented) son.

            ‘Fuck off out my way,’ he’d shouted after catching his ankle in the stationery wheel of Charlie’s push-chair. ‘And look where you’re fucking going,’ he yelled over his shoulder, as he careered down the side line in deadly pursuit of the action.

            I hadn’t been to a match since.

            ‘Forecast tomorrow looks pretty bad.’ I offered up to Silas. ‘Heavy rain? Think it might be too much for Charlie…’

            I watched Silas from the corner of my eye, his features clouding over in disappointment and felt that familiar clutch at my heart.

            ‘Okay, okay,’ I said, raising my hands in surrender, unable to continue my charade. ‘Messaging Marta now, let’s see if she can babysit Charlie for a few hours.’ But even as I was poking out the message on my phone, I saw the negative consequences of this offer: envisioned myself working through Saturday night, alone in my studio, black coffee, after black coffee, summoning recalcitrant words onto a blank page. But this was how I expressed my love: making good, mopping up, trying to be both parents at once.

            ‘Nice,’ said Silas, and his smile unrolled like early summer. His need to wrap his family around him outweighed requirements to be cool and I reminded myself this was a gift. A gift to me, the step-mother he had once found so hard to accept.

            ‘I think I’ll wear my new blue leggings,’ announced Maisie.

            ‘Mazza – Lars won’t notice,’ laughed Silas. Then, perhaps trying to be more tactful – ‘He’s not … you know, a clothes person.’

            ‘You don’t actually know everything,’ she informed him with a toss of her head.

            ‘And as for you, little man,’ I said, wiping Charlie’s face with the tea-towel. ‘It’s bed time, no arguing.’

            ‘No me bed,’ said Charlie, with a firm shake of his blonde curls, before posting his last sausage into straight into Wilf’s open jaw.

*

Later, when the household had settled – when the spelling lists were learnt and safely stowed, Maisie’s emerald school uniform tumbling round and round in the washing machine – I set up my laptop on the kitchen table.

            I felt the pink, fleecy arms of Maisie’s dressing-gown, snaking around me from behind, enveloping me in a tight hug.

            ‘You said five ticks. What’you doing?’ she asked accusingly, peering over my shoulder.

            ‘Working.’

            ‘You’re always working.’

            ‘If you’d let me go over to the studio – I’d be done quicker?’ I heard the pleading in my voice; Maisie however, did not.

            ‘No, stay here. I’ll work with you – I’m going to make an anniversary card for you and Daddy.’

            She sauntered over to the old-fashioned kitchen dresser, returning with blue card, felt tips and three phials of glitter, our wedding photograph, balanced precariously on top.

            ‘Look,’ she commanded, balancing the silver frame on my keyboard.

            My green dress, the snow, a small, solemn boy clutching at his father’s hand.

            ‘You look very happy Mummy,’ she said, jamming herself into the tight space between me and the table edge, as she angled backwards to perch on my knee. ‘Were you really, really happy?’ I heard the smile in her voice.

            I picked up the photo, nestled my nose into her hair. ‘Of course, I was … very–’

            ‘Thought so.’ She nodded her head in satisfaction. ‘But sometimes… you know, when I’m looking at this photo, I wonder sometimes, if …’ She leant back into my shoulder; anxiety fluttered up my torso. Could she see something in the photograph – something that I had missed? She traced her index finger over Joe’s image, then around her brother’s small, pale face. ‘Well … it’s just …what I mean is, what’s a matter with Silas here?’ She tilted the photo towards the pendant light. ‘Mummy,’ she asked with more urgency. ‘Is he crying?’

            I let out a long slow breath that riffled through Maisie’s hair. We’re good. Nothing to see here. And no, Silas wasn’t crying, but he wasn’t happy; it had taken him a long time to accept my presence in his life, his father’s new wife.

            ‘Well, it was a little bit difficult for him at the beginning,’ I conceded, my voice taking on that sing-song trill used by adults, straying into untrodden territory. ‘He didn’t want to share his daddy with anyone. He’d had him all to himself for a long time.’

            ‘Lucky him,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I wish I could have Daddy all to myself.’

            My heart squeezed like a sponge behind my ribs; I felt for my child, so naked in her wants and needs. Then my heart continued to wring itself tighter – and me? What about me? I didn’t need Joe all to myself … but ... but what? Like Oliver Twist with his bowl held out in supplication, I needed more.

            Tightening my arms around Maisie’s fleecy waist, I rested my head against her solid back. Married life, I thought, was a summation of choices, little forks in the road, seemingly tiny moments – we could do it this way, or we could do it that way – until a  decade of micro-choices calcified into certainty. Each year, while Joe chased and hustled a bit more, taking his business from kitchen-top start-up, to selling out to corporate giant, Kwok Inc, I’d learned to manage with a little bit less. Less of Joe. Ten years ago, on that snowy day in Marylebone, I’d married a talented, local architect, now I found myself married to an international property developer who barely lived with us.

            It was almost impossible to imagine a different life. Almost, but not quite. Recently, I’d sensed a growing desire within myself, to return to some of the little forks and plot a re-route.

            ‘Oh, sweetheart, I know. But he’s been so busy, very busy. He works hard to take care of us, you know that.’ Beneath my fingers, I felt her breath drop as she sighed again, this time theatrically loud. ‘But things are going to change…’ I continued in bracing tones. ‘Daddy and I have had a little chat and…’

            She squeezed herself round to face me.

            ‘And what?’

            Maisie knew what a little chat meant. It was me reprimanding Silas; it was me setting boundaries and curfews; it was me rifling through our son’s belongings, looking for spliff and vodka. In our household, little chats tended to be on the larger side. She looked at me hopefully.

            ‘Daddy’s going to be around much more, you’ll see.’

            ‘How much more?’ Her father’s indigo eyes bored into me. ‘Will he take me to school? You know … like he used to? I hate that Daddy’s never here.’

            I nodded.

            She grabbed my chin between her hands. ‘So, you promise he’ll be here more?’ Her eyebrows lifted into two gold-flecked question marks. ‘Say promise.’

            ‘Yes,’ I said, but my eyes slipped from hers.

            ‘Good,’ she said, lining her glitter tubes up on the table. ‘Cos I was getting a bit worried…’

            ‘Worried?’

            ‘Well… I mean, I was worried… that maybe… you and Daddy–’

            ‘Me and Daddy what?’

            Her features turned solemn. ‘Well… you know…’ she said, picking her words with unusual care. ‘I thought… maybe, you and Daddy had got a divorcement and…well, you know, forgotten to tell us?’

(Photograph by Caitlin Isola)

cat. No one missed her for three weeks and when her neighbours finally called the police it took them an hour to find her. This is a one bedroom flat we’re talking about, a tiny flat that, when empty, could be traversed in under a minute. But she was what we in the business call a complex hoarder: she hoarded everything and none of it was in any order. Newspapers and clothes are stage one, easy to obtain, easy to sort through, but Morag hoarded train tickets, shoes, jam jars, hat boxes, spoons, and CDs; VCRs, vacuum cleaners, blankets and nail varnish bottles; ironing boards and chess sets. We found four bird cages each large enough for a Bird of Paradise, and a wall of wigs coated in so much dust they all looked grey. Morag herself was hidden under a pile of coats behind the boiler, her body desiccated, her skin yellow as custard. Her death was ruled accidental, though I don’t believe it’s an accident when old people can’t afford to turn on their heating. I would rule that malicious neglect if I was in charge. No one cared about Morag, that’s why she died. But someone cares about her flat, and so now it’s my job to make it look like a desirable opportunity for a young couple with a minimalist aesthetic to enter the property ladder. 

            Once everything is gone from the flat there will be a stain on the floor in the boiler cupboard, one I’m tempted to leave behind so that no one can ever forget about Morag, but instead I will disinfect it, sand it down until the stain has gone and re-varnish the boards so they look brand new, because I’m good at my job. But I’m going to find a way to make sure she’s remembered - after all you don’t hoard because you want to be forgotten, you hoard because you’re terrified of it. There’s a lot you learn about someone when you take their life apart, and Morag wanted her life to be bigger than she had room for. When I’m packing things up I always keep my eye open for what can be reused, rehomed, repurposed, and today I have my eye on those wigs. They’re good ones, made from top quality synthetic hair, and with a proper wash, a deep condition and a modern cut my friend Annie on the cancer ward would find happy homes for them. I suspect Morag would like that. I think it would make her happy to see them bobbing around the streets of Glasgow, meeting up with pals for coffee, dropping off their kids at nursery, talking back to their bosses at work. I think it would give her a real kick. I just need to make sure she doesn’t have any family. If she does they don’t deserve anything, leaving her alone like this, but I’ve learnt the hard way that you can’t assume. 

            My first job wasn’t a million miles away from this one, up the high rise that’s round the corner. It was a call out in the middle of the night - the police didn’t know who to call, so they called my mum. She was a house cleaner who had cleaned one of their houses for years, and the usual SOC (scene of crime) cleaner was on holiday. I’d been working with her for a few months after being kicked out of school for graffiti in the bathroom (not my first offence) and she was raging. She wanted more for me, she told me, and she thought if she could show me how miserable her life was then I’d find a way to finish my schooling. The joke was on her though because I loved it. Earlier in the week three gangsters had been shot dead in the kitchen, and the dogs that they kept chained up had gotten free and started eating their corpses before the police arrived. The blood from their murders had seeped all over the floor and the counters, splashed on the walls and ceiling. It was like a group of toddlers had been let loose in there with a can of paint. But because it was the kitchen, and junkies hate soft furnishings, it was easy to clean. Mopping, wiping, disinfecting, mopping and wiping again. The grout needed bleaching but the stainless steel came up beautifully and honestly you could have put the place in a magazine by the time I was done. At the end of the week I was hooked. The only blemish on that job was when I took home a dragon figurine I found under the sink. It turned out it belonged to one of the guys’ kids, so I got a slap on my hand for that, and I’ve never walked away with anything again. Not without asking. 

            So I’d check about those wigs, and maybe see if the zoo want the cages. I like to find a home for everything, because most stuff just needs a wash and a shine and it’s ready for another life. Saving on the dump fees helps as it’s one of my main expenses on a job like this. And I need big jobs like this, more than ever, because my life is about to get a whole lot more complicated. I’ve always had an irregular period, hence my early expertise with the technicalities of blood removal, but eight weeks have passed since my last which can only mean one thing: I need to start thinking about non-toxic cleaning products.

            Callum and I met on the job. He’s a policeman, or a Police Officer I should say. Unlike me he Finished School, went to the Academy, and is on the Fast Track to take over the Whole Joint. I was cleaning a big house out in Newton Mearns after what they’d ruled was a suicide, when he rushed in in a fluster. I didn’t hear him at first as I was using the pressure washer on the outside paving, so by the time he got my attention he was close enough to get spattered with water. It wasn’t clean water, unfortunately, as it was my first go over after they’d removed the body, so I suggested he strip off and we run the clothes through the machine. It was a bit of a joke, but the cheeky bugger did exactly that, and it was easy to tell why: he was built like a statue, rock hard and smooth as marble. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.  He explained he was back as there was new evidence suggesting it wasn’t suicide and they needed to re-seal the scene. I had only just started outside and hadn’t been in the house yet so that was an easy request, but he was curious as to why it was so tidy inside. Recognising the amateur trails of a vacuum cleaner on the wrong setting (people often use the hardwood setting on a deep pile carpet,  and the brushes meant to sweep the floor drag along the carpet leaving telltale stripes) I suggested they might have done their own clean up: no self-respecting cleaner would make that kind of mistake. With my knowledge largely formed by watching American crime shows I opened up the vacuum cleaner and gave him the bag: a good place to start on a search for fibres, I jokingly suggested. It turned out I was right and the celebratory drink he took me for the following week ended up with me getting a turn to feel just how smooth his chest really was. We’d been inseparable ever since. We got married in the same courthouse where they convicted the guy who Callum caught thanks to me. I say Callum, but actually I called him Cuffs and he called me Gloves. It’s just one of the things that made us so cute you could puke.

            When I got home I could tell he’d had a terrible day. His boots were tipped over in the hallway, and his uniform was on the floor in the bathroom. He knew I hated it when he left his stuff lying around, so I had to just squash down my irritation and read the signs: mess was his way of asking for help. I knew he’d been battling with a case at work he wouldn’t tell me about, so it was all about distraction. I had the eight minutes it took me to disinfect myself to figure out the best way to cheer him up. I needed him happy because I wanted him ecstatic about the news. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it, even though we had talked about it, and planned it, as far as you can with these things. The truth was Callum always made me feel better about things. It was part of how we fit together. I’d point out all the crappy things, and he’d talk up the shiny, bright ones. When we were looking around this flat, my reaction of “The floorboards are worn down, there are draughts and I’m sure I saw mouse droppings” was countered with his “But look at the view from those windows” and he took my hand and made me look out over the twinkling lights of the city and I knew we were home. His hands were always warm, and mine were always cold. We just fit.

            My disinfecting routine was clinical and obsessive. It wasn’t just good professional practice, but I hated the thought that I was bringing anything from work into my home. We both worked in violent, unhappy spaces and fought to keep the boundary between those and our own lives distinct. It’s why I didn’t pester Cuffs about his cases: it was an unspoken pact we had, to protect our life together from all the horrifying things that surrounded us. In a way it was the same promise you make in every marriage, to keep each other safe from the world outside, but in our case the world was literally murder and rape and no one wants that unless it's on the telly.

            By the time my coveralls, gloves and booties were in the washing machine and I was scrubbing myself down in the shower, I had started to let myself feel some excitement at what was about to happen. My swollen breasts already knew that our lives would never be the same again, but until we’d said it out loud to each other, it was just another cold January night. It’s rare that you know when your life is about to change forever, but tonight, I took a moment to recognise that privilege. I dried my hair off looking in the mirror. Mum? Mama? Mummy? Who was I about to become? With a smile I wrapped myself up in my big fluffy dressing gown, pulled on my sheepskin slippers and went to meet my fate. 

            Cuffs was in the kitchen, angrily chopping something firm and red while large chunks of white onion were charring in a frying pan. He was a terrible cook, but his mother had instilled in him a sense of independence which blossomed out of shape into a bullish need to prove himself when he was upset. This often manifested itself as cooking, cleaning, or mending things, badly. Just as I recognised the boots tossed on the floor as a cry for help, when he started his this sort of aggressive housework I knew his vision had narrowed to the point where he was lost in a tunnel with his eyes clamped shut. It was unlikely he’d find his way out on his own, and before I arrived these moods took him to a dance floor and a bottle of vodka. I needed to approach with care.

            “Hi. What’ya making?” I tried a cute smile. He glanced at me, sweat beading on his forehead, a tea towel over his shoulder. 

            “Pasta something. We don’t have anything in the fridge. I’m improvising.”

            “Do you want some help?” 

            He shook his head. He still hadn’t met my eyes. I kissed the back of his neck and put my arms around his waist, leaning my face in between his shoulders.

            “It smells terrible,” I muttered.

            He put the knife down with a clatter and turned to face me, peeling my arms off and staring at me. I stared back. We’d see who broke first. I kept my eyes open, my chin down and my lips tight as I watched his knotted face start to unfurl. 

            Slowly his eyebrows widened, the lines in his forehead disappearing into the air along with his fury. As a smile crept over his mouth his nose flattened and his cheeks grew rounder, punctuated with matching dimples. 

            I raised my eyebrows and tilted my head. 

            He stuck out his chin and narrowed his eyes. And then he laughed. A wonderful sound like a blast of joy erupting from a long dormant geyser, forceful and fast. I grinned back. 

            “Bad day?” I asked. 

            He held me tight, clinging onto me like I was a branch dangling over a rushing river as he barrelled towards a waterfall. 

            We agreed that we’d get take away. We had two stable incomes but we also had a large mortgage so it wasn’t something we did often, but we’d still managed to become friends with the owners of the Indian restaurant around the corner. I suspected Callum might find himself there when I wasn’t around, either that or they really were giving him end-of-day leftovers out of a desire to ‘avoid wasting food’. Despite our solemn pact not to lie to each other, I approved of the confidence and specificity of the story, and benefitted so deliciously that I had chosen not to challenge it. The restaurant was run by a Sikh family who lived nearby and they had a fresh menu each week, depending on what was available and what they felt like cooking. We were looking at the menu online and Callum took my hand, absentmindedly tangling his fingers through mine.

            “Lamb. I don’t know about lamb. It feels like a lot for a Monday. Lamb feels like a celebration,” he said. 

            “Get the lamb,” I said, rubbing my thumb over his hand. There was a depth to my voice that sabotaged my attempt at light and casual, even I could hear it.

            He stopped scrolling and the room felt really still. I could feel my breath in my head, my pulse in my throat. I looked down at my legs slung over his as we sat coiled on the sofa. I couldn’t meet his eyes. 

            “Really?” He whispered. He lifted my chin so that he could see into my eyes. I nodded, and smiled. His put his huge, freckly hands around my head as he leant in to kiss me, and kiss me again. My ears were covered and just for a second, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his crinkly eyes told me everything. Was that a tear? Had I brought the marble man to tears?

            “Really? Really truly?” I pulled his hands off my ears and held them in mine. I nodded, suddenly unable to speak. His enthusiasm was what I had wanted but faced with it, it felt as though I was getting credit for something I hadn’t done. I felt embarrassed for a moment, but then I realised it was deferred congratulations: I would earn this attention, not just over the next seven or eight months, but in the lifetime that followed. 

            The lifetime. The lifetime. It dawned on me as the news met the air that I was now no longer the centre of my world, our world. And I had chosen to do this, and couldn’t take it back. I felt queasy as the blood drained from my face. 

            “Eddie? Gloves? Are you okay?” I rubbed my eyes, shook my head and my ears stopped ringing. Callum’s anxious face was close to mine. 

            “The little bugger is already telling us who’s in charge,” I smiled. Callum laughed, and opened my dressing gown to kiss my stomach. His beard was tickly on my sensitised skin. 

            “Hello baby! Hello in there!” I laughed and pushed him away. 

            “I’m starving, Callum. I need to eat. Like, all the time.” Callum leapt up. His whole body radiated joy, his limbs alive with excitement.

            “I’ll go and get some lamb! My first official hunter gatherer act.”

            “It’s freezing, we could just get them to deliver?”

            “No! No! I’ll go! You know it’s quicker if I pick it up. And then I can tell Gary too. He might give us some free poppadoms.”

            “No!” He turned at that. “I don’t want you telling anyone yet. It’s too early. I haven’t even told my mother.”

            “Okay! Whatever you say.” He was racing around the flat, picking up his clothes, whatever gloom that had caused him to drop them now forgotten, pulling on his boots and coat. 

            “Get lots, okay?” I called. “More than you would think. Then we can have it for breakfast tomorrow too."  I lay back on the sofa, putting my feet up on a cushion and closing my eyes. I felt a large hairy kiss on my cheek before he swished away, closing the door behind him. I fell asleep quickly, more contented than I remember having been in years. 

            I awoke to a series of shouts coming from outside. We were on the second floor and didn’t live in the smartest part of town, so fights weren’t uncommon, but this time I recognised one of the voices. I leapt off the sofa and ran to the window. I could see Callum, hands laden with bags of food, tussling with a tall guy wearing a hood. I opened the window, shouting his name and saw him look up, terror in his eyes, as the man dragged a knife across his throat. I froze, unable to breathe. Callum fell to the icy concrete as the man disappeared into the darkness. The food dropped to the ground, spilling from its tightly packed containers, and dark red blood pumped out around my beloved’s head like a halo. I ran down the tenement stairs, screaming his name, and burst onto the street as the neighbours’ windows opened above us. I fell to my knees and tried to staunch the blood flow but it was too late, it had already stopped. He was gone. I could hear the wail of sirens in the distance, drawing closer.  And then all I could hear was my heart beating, all I could see was the blood on my slippers, all I could think was that there was no way I was ever going to get them clean. 

CHAPTER TWO

The Reverend Augustus Dupré sat waiting in the chilly darkness, his mobile phone sitting heavy in his hand like a gun that had just been fired. They would be here soon and he needed to be ready for what came next: the painful negotiations, the desperate outpourings, the angry recriminations by those and with those and for those who fought for the bread crumbs of life. He had grappled with the systems that failed to support the people who needed them the most, those who found themselves in a place so low considered that it was known only as ‘the corridor’, not deemed worthy even for denomination. Was it possible that his flock were stuck here because they did not know whence they tried to flee? It would be foolish to expect pride and belonging from people who cannot even situate themselves. But pride and belonging was what they needed. Since arriving here fifteen years ago,  he had laboured to regain the trust of those who had placed themselves at the mercy of the church previously desecrated in the most unholy ways.  He was faced with the impossible challenge of saving those who would rather drown than accept a raft from you in a storm, so he prayed for inspiration. And the Lord provided. Although it was not ecumenical policy, he gathered his congregation and confessed to the sins of those that had gone before him, and asking his flock for a second chance. In return he had offered them a second chance, whenever they needed one, and however often, to commit to the everlasting. In a place where trust itself had been desecrated, the promise he made to them to be loyal and constant had become the foundation on which the whole community relied. He was their rock, and he would not shatter, no matter how many times he was tested. 

            “Lord guide me,” he whispered, “Lord help me to help those you love and for whom you died. Let me be the vessel through which your holy will be done.”

            Tear it down, thought Eve. 

            She didn’t object to the footprint of industry amongst nature. She was in the wrong job if that was her thinking, though her mind did tend to creep that way on the bad jobs. Her irritation spiked at the carelessness in the decay, the potent laziness, that one day someone had looked over all this for the last time and left it to be someone else’s problem. Someone like her.

            Scotland’s northeastern coastline was speckled with these scenes; industrial ruins littered with piles of discarded girders and beams, decaying warehouses one storm away from collapse. Money was starting to flow back into pockets of the region, new developments hammering out turbine blades and smooth stems for offshore windfarms, but most inlets and headlands were still blistered by sights like this.

            There was a rumour of rain on the horizon.

            Eve stamped her boots, trying to encourage some blood to flow back into her toes. The cab had dropped her off, what – she pulled out her phone and thumbed the screen – twenty minutes ago. Where the hell were they?

            She went back to scrolling through her messages.

            Her mum was asking ‘…when would it be a good time to call? I know you’re off soon…’. Why didn’t she just call? When had conversations become a diarised event rather than the result of a maternal gut lurch that you wanted to know how your only begotten child was doing?

            Eve sighed. She’d call Mum from the oil platform, signal depending. Would they have signal? They’d have a data connection for sure.

            Kathryn was organising a dinner, would be inviting some cute new guys from work, ‘Do you want in?’

            Tim and Ben wanted to know if she could dog-sit Tina a week from now, they were ‘headed to Bali to remember what sun feels like.’ Lucky gits.

            She got to Ed’s message.

            ‘Cape Town is beautiful. You'd have loved it. Far warmer than the North Sea, for sure. Still in the low 40s come evening, which I'll admit is a bit much. Feels good to be here. Really hope that the time away is good for you, Evelyn. I’m struggling to see how we can carry on. You’ve got to get a grip on your fears, on everything that’s stopping you from moving forward. What are you scared of? I hope you get the chance to think about that.’

            Self-righteous prick.

            She’d tapped out and deleted several replies.

            Not now. Soon, but not now.

            A low droning sound filled the air. Eve pocketed her phone, looking up to see a boat entering the cove by the gap between the cliff arms.

            About time.

            She hefted up her bag – a battered yellow tarp holdall with enough thick layers and socks for the week – and made her way down the yard’s slope toward the jetty, picking her way between the worst of the congealing seaweed, her boots gripping and grinding on the layer of wet sand that coated the ancient concrete.

            The boat was small for a crew transporter, no more than eight metres from bow to stern. Its black hull was pockmarked with silver scars, a history of misadventure and bad piloting. A series of mismatched tyres ran around the edge of its deck, ready for the next ill-judged docking manoeuvre. A white cabin was positioned at the front of the boat, an open wooden deck behind it. Figures began emerging as it drew into the narrow space of the cove, the noise of the craft’s twin outboard engines growing to an uncomfortable roar, the sound bouncing back off the rocks. It swung about as it neared the precarious jetty, the handful of crew milling about the rear deck watching Eve as she approached. The engine cut abruptly, restoring a stillness to the yard.

            Eve raised a hand to hail the boat. One of the men raised an arm in response, calling out.

            “Evelyn Field?”

            She nodded.

            “That’s me.”

            A couple of heads were shaken. Smiles were exchanged.

            “You’re in the wrong bay.”

            She frowned.

            “The wrong… this isn’t the Inverbeath Yard?”

            There was an edge of anger to the man’s voice, a southern Scottish accent. Edinburgh, most likely. He wore a black hooded coat and orange life vest, a grey woollen hat pulled low over his brow, making it almost impossible to make out his features. What little Eve could see of his expression was harsh – brown, hard eyes glaring at her, mouth set in a firm line, grey stubble coating a square jaw.

            “No. This is Boddim. Inverbeath’s 10 minutes back up the coast, where we’ve been waiting.”

            Eve squeezed the strap of her holdall, the thick fibres taking the brunt of her frustration. The jetty creaked beneath her.

            “Right. Well, I’m sorry. The taxi dropped me off here. He said he knew the place.”

            “Aye, well, he didn’t.

            “Or he was set to come back later,” one of the other men chipped in, “when ya were cold n tired.”

            Someone else chuckled at that, more heads shaken.

            She’d sorted her own taxi from Aberdeen airport, the Greater Oil Group unable or reluctant to arrange a pick up. She had regretted her choice of driver within 20 seconds of hailing him, a bald letch in his late fifties who’d spent almost as much time looking at her in his rear view mirror as he had looking at the road ahead of them.

            “English, eh?” he’d asked, pulling out of the arrivals carpark.

            “Yep.”

            “On ya own?”

            “For now.”

            “Business or Ple…”

            “Work.”

            “Anythin’ interesting?”

            “Oil and gas. Decommissioning work.”

            There had followed a string of the usual questions to which she’d given monosyllabic answers. Were there many women working on rigs and platforms these days? No. Would she be out there long? No. Did the men usually try it on with her? Sometimes. Was that a drawback of the job? Yes. Did it pay well? Relatively. Did she believe in global warming? Yes. That revelation had set him off on a conspiracy-laden monologue for the rest of the 45-minute drive. He’d not noticed her sneak her ear buds in after 10 minutes, zoning out with the latest episode of the Green Dreamer podcast. Or maybe he had noticed. Perhaps that was why he’d set her down at Boddim rather than at Inverbeath. The prick.

            The man with the Edinburgh accent shook his head.

            “You’re lucky we came up the coast. Had a hunch you might have been dropped off at the wrong spot – they used Boddim for crew transfer up until a few years back. Had to argue the captain around to swinging past. Com’on, I’ll check you in and we’ll be off.”

            The crew transport was still a good metre or two out from the jetty, the captain in his cabin clearly not wanting to put any more dents in his hull or test out the strength of the jetty’s pilings.

            She was aware of eyes on her, the five men on the back of the craft waiting to see how she’d navigate the situation.

            Like it was a test.

            “He could bring it in a bit more, couldn’t he? Chuck a line over?”

            “I think this is close enough. This is just wasting our time…”

            The engines kicked back into life, cutting off the rest of his response. The boat began inching back, its unseen driver eager to escape the cove and make for open water. That was as close as he was going to get.

            Eve bit down on her tongue. What an absolute tosser.

            She slung her bag out into open air, watching it fall perfectly onto the centre of the deck. She took a step back, the wood under her boots alive with groans and shakes, and took a short run to the edge of the jetty. Her fall only lasted two, three seconds at most, the deck of the craft rushing up to meet her. She crouched low on impact, her knees taking the strain of the drop. The boat began moving at pace before she’d even had time to stand. 

            “Stow your bag in there and take a survival suit,” the man in the grey hat continued, apparently unmoved by her theatrical entrance. Whoever he was, he appeared to be in charge.  He nodded to a large metal box by the door of the cabin, pockmarked with dents and scuffs. “I’ll take your papers now, and there are few things for you to sign off. It’ll be a three-hour trip, all being well. Space is tight in the cabin, so find a spot and settle in. We’re late, and I want to avoid arriving in the storm.”

            Eve zipped open her bag where it lay on the deck, retrieving her folder of contract paperwork. She handed it to the man, who passed her a thick manilla envelope in exchange. The remaining crew, apparently disappointed that they hadn’t witnessed the collapse of a jetty or their latest addition toppling into the freezing waters, trudged back into the cabin. She closed her bag and moved towards the store box, battling momentarily with its spring-loaded catch, her fingers painfully numb. It eventually sprang open, revealing an assortment of luggage and canvas. She stowed her bag and began digging around, retrieving a battered grey survival suit and yellow life vest.

            They had moved out of the cove and into the open sea, the temperature dropping as they left the shelter of the cliffs. A wind grabbed at Eve’s hair, salt spray lashing the air as the nose of the craft broke through a few waves.

            Three hours of this? Why hadn’t they got anything more substantial, something with a bigger cabin. Surely the Greater Oil Group had more at their disposal for crew transfer than a small runaround?

            Eve unzipped and stepped into the survival suit, the smell of stale sweat breathing over her as she pulled it up over her hips and shoulders. She was glad of the extra layers between her and the biting air as she clipped the life vest closed and tightened its straps, stepping into the gloomy cabin.

            There were six in the cabin in total, all men. Two benches ran across the centre of the small space, the two figures seated on the foremost bench turned toward each other, deep in half-shouted conversation, each leaning forward in a bid to hear the other’s bellowed response against the sound of engines. The captain of the crew boat stood beyond them, manning the controls, eyes fixed on the waters ahead. The man Eve had handed her papers to sat on the nearer bench, closest to the door. He was examining her documents, signing forms, passing them to a huge figure that occupied the bench alongside him. He half-turned to look Eve over, giving her a nod before turning back to her papers.

            There was a strong poke to the back of her left thigh. She swallowed a yelp, turning to look down at a lump of a figure seated on the floor, back propped up against the wall, round face beaming out from under the hood of a dirty orange coat. He’d look more in place on a pumpkin patch.

            He stuck out a cold, podgy hand, which Eve stooped to shake.

            “Simon Coleridge!” he shouted. “Mechanical engineer! Take a seat!”

            He gestured to the floor next to him. Were there really no extra seats? She sighed, lowering herself down, an involuntary groan escaping her as she leant back against the wall. It did feel good to be off her feet.

            “Eve, environmental engineer.”

            Simon Coleridge, the orange engineer, raised his eyebrows at this. It wasn’t an unusual response. Thankfully, he didn’t make anything of it. Instead, he dug around in his coat. When he held out his hand again, it was clutching a battered packed of cigarettes.

            “Fancy a smoke?”

            Eve smiled, shaking her head.

            “Not for me, thanks.”

            “Suit yourself!” He unscrewed the lid and took a swig, before raising his voice to call to the man working through Eve’s documents. “Hey, Fraser – fancy a smoke?”

            Fraser, the Edinburgh man in the grey woollen hat, shook his head.

            “Ah doesn’t anyone live a little around here?”

            Coleridge chuckled to himself as he lit up, before stowing the packet back in an inner pocket of his coat. He leaned close to Eve, the smell of smoke on his breath mingling with the background scent of engine oil and sea water.

            “Your first platform decommissioning?”

            She shook her head, then shrugged. “I’ve done a few on installations brought back to docks. Never done anything out at sea before.”

            “Ah, you’ll love it,” shouted Coleridge. “S’like a great ruddy hotel out in the ocean. Views for days, incredible sunrises, decent food. Interesting work. Bit more variation than usual shifts. I do them all the time now – and gets me away from the missus, which I think she’s glad of.”

            He rocked sideways precariously, laughing at his own remark. Eve waited for him to recover from his humour before shouting a question that had been bothering her.

            “Don’t they usually fly crew out? I thought most transfers to anything this far out were done by helicopter?”

            Coleridge nodded.

            “I’ve always been flown before. Talk at the office was that the finances on this job were an absolute mess, they’re trying to claw back the pennies with every opportunity they can get. Sending us out on this” – he slapped the metal wall of the cabin – “saves a few grand, apparently. Helicopter fuel, eh? Plus, with the amount of unseasonal storm activity they’ve been getting around the oil fields, they’re apparently sick of having to ground all flights and wait on calm skies. Time is money, and all that.” Simon shrugged and looked towards the front window of the cabin.

            If any serious weather blew in while they were bombing along in a boat this small… She now understood the frustration of the man at the wheel, and the eagerness of the man called Fraser to get moving.

            Questions had been raised in Eve’s own office when the itinerary had been sent through. Was she sure? North Sea oil platforms were usually serviced by a combination of helicopter and support boats, with crew shuttled in and out by air. It was usually only supplies that were delivered by sea. Dropping off a decommissioning crew by boat, particularly a craft this small, was pretty unusual. Her line manager had gone over her itinerary with her – he wasn’t being an arsehole about it, he was genuinely concerned, eager to see if he could spot a reason for Greater Oil Group’s decision to go by boat. He couldn’t.

            The grotty taxi to the wrong yard and the three-hour journey by boat were compounding Eve’s hatred of Greater Oil Group. Were they improving the standards of their operations to the timeline they had promised? Were they scaling back on oil and gas in line with their promised diversification of energy production? Like fuck they were. They were making more money than they knew what to do with, and not because of any great leap forward in technology or engineering breakthrough; another moment of Middle Eastern tension had pushed up the fifth consecutive year of record profits. And yet here she was, bouncing along over the North Sea in the wrong kind of boat, all because someone didn’t want to fork out for a helicopter.

            Her dad’s voice came unsummoned, as it always did.

            So naive. Who did she think had set her industry up? Governments and green groups, with all the love and money they had going spare? She was daft. Bitter. She was a puppet on their strings, brought along to green wash things and ensure they were doing their due diligence. Did she think she’d be shutting rigs down? Auditing platforms and finding things that would bring Greater Oil Group to its knees? Should have gone into proper engineering, where the proper money was. And then she’d have been able to develop proper solutions, engineering new technologies that might actually save the planet, not piss off the proper engineers who were literally keeping the world’s lights on.

            Fuck you, dad.

            Eve was painfully aware he had a point. Several points.

            Gas and oil installations made up the bulk of her company’s revenue. The biggest pay days were usually for environmental engineering and audits of energy installations, reviewing environmental compliance and property assessment. But she always bristled at how he described her work. She was a ‘proper’ engineer. Her work was highly complex, far more so than much of the grease and grind tasks of most of the meat heads she’d been stationed alongside on previous audits. She took pride in what she did. She was good at it. If that saw her act as a splinter in the side of big oil, then so be…

            The sound of the boat’s signal horn cut through the roar of the engines, a sharp blast that had Eve and Coleridge flinching.

            Both of the men on the front bench were on their feet, moving alongside the captain. One raised an arm to point at something, the captain slapping his gesture away in anger. Simon began struggling to get upright next to Eve, his mucky yellow boots squeaking on the scuffed metal deck.

            There was a shout from up front, and a dull thud as something hit the hull of the boat.

            The engines fell to a low murmur, everyone in the cabin lurching as the craft began to slow rapidly, the captain swinging them about in a sharp turn. The men who had been alongside him were moving quickly, striding to the cabin’s exit, eyes on the water.

            “The hell is going on?” Simon asked no one in particular.

            Everyone was moving now, turning or talking, making for the rear deck, confused faces. Eve got to her feet and followed them out.