I know she’ll be waiting for my reply, but I don’t respond. After a couple of minutes, she messages me again.
You know what I’m saying though, right, Clee? I just mean you ran away from your problems but found the exact same shit waiting for you at the other end. Same shit, different day! Classic you!
She’s added a poop and a sunshine emoji this time.
It’s becoming horribly clear to me that however much I think of Ruby as my close friend, time apart is exposing huge holes in our friendship. In a few short texts she’s managed to reduce my achievements to nothing and it feels unkind. It’s an uncomfortable thought to wonder if we’re friends out of convenience rather than genuine feelings. Same address, same age, same city. When I don’t reply, she tries again.
At least it’s rich pickings for work, a spectacular failed flamingo story!
And then, as I squint at the screen, trying to work out what the emoji is, she adds
Sorry! Hit the wrong bird looking for flamingo! But this one works too!
Crying with laughter emoji.
On close inspection, it’s a chicken. Oh, sod off, Ruby, I think. I’m not chicken. I’ve come here alone to do something that feels personally important, it isn’t my fault Mack’s here too. I know her well enough to realize she won’t have intended to cause offence, but I’m not sure she’d be that fussed to know she’d caused it, either.
I came here to learn lessons, and perhaps this is one of them. That realizing when to let go of a relationship is just as important as knowing when to hang on to one.
I don’t reply to Ruby. For as long as I’m here, I’m one of the island’s women, someone who communicates with an arm around your shoulders, not stupid emojis and exclamation marks.
I’m relieved to find Otter Lodge deserted when I make it down the hill. There’s something I want to do, and I’d really like the place to myself for it. Inside, I stick the kettle on and then break the rules, crossing into Mack’s half of the room for just long enough to recover my almost-empty suitcase from its storage place under the bed.
Flinging it open on the rug by the fireplace, I lift out the only thing left inside. A dress I’ve owned for quite a few years yet never found occasion to wear. Vintage snow-white cotton, tiny capped sleeves with frills, a froth of lace around the knees – an impulse buy that has always felt a bit too BBC costume drama to actually leave the house in. I don’t know why it seems appropriate for my thirtieth birthday ceremony, but it does. Emma Watson could so pull it off. I hope I can. It’s less than a week until the big day now. In some ways it will be the culmination of my experience here but in another way it’s lost some of its significance because every moment here feels transformative. I’ve been thinking about my dad almost every day, about the indelible mark he left on the world in his short life. What legacy would I leave behind if something happened to me tomorrow? Magazine articles are chip paper, online columns soon swamped by millions of other clicks and soundbites. Being part of the knitting circle has reminded me of the value of creating something tangible, a physical reminder I was here. I don’t know who, if anyone, will wear the scarf but I’m making it in the hope of it bringing someone else comfort. It’s reminded me how much joy writing has always brought me too. Not the flamingo column so much these days, but my laptop is littered with half-finished novels, beginnings and middles with no ends. A couple of friends have made the leap from journalism to fiction, and I’ve attended their launch parties with a secret pang of green-eyed envy. Here in Salvation, I finally have the time and the space, and a persistent voice whispering, ‘If not now, when?’
I thread the dress on to the padded hanger I brought with me in anticipation of hanging it in the lodge to look at in the days running up to my birthday. Obviously, with Mack around, I haven’t felt able to do that. I trace the tiny shell buttons down the bodice with my fingertip. It’s intricate enough to have been part of a bridal trousseau. Who else has worn it, I wonder? I imagine it lying, brand-new and starched, amongst other such pretty garments in a drawer, another girl fastening these buttons, the thoughts that must have raced through her head. The fanciful notion appeals to my romantic heart.
And then I sigh because my aforementioned romantic heart is giving me quite a lot of unexpected grief. I lay awake for a long time last night and, if I’m honest, much of it was spent resisting the urge to crawl into bed with Mack. Before our kiss, I was able to rationalize our odd couple situation. I’d even started to enjoy the whole ‘staying on our respective sides of the chalk line’ thing. I’ve come to know Mack Sullivan better in a few weeks than I would have in a few years back in the real world. I’ve shared more with him about myself than I have with any other person, I think, ever. Our ‘three things’ conversations in the dark had become a form of therapy for both of us, sometimes big things, sometimes small things, the things that have made us the people we are. But then we kissed and it’s as if someone picked up a snow globe with Otter Lodge inside it and gave it the most almighty shake. He’s royally screwed up my self-coupling project. No, I have; I’ve screwed it up. I can’t even begin to think how I’m going to write my flamingo column for the next few weeks. I know one thing for sure: we have no future together. He will go home to Boston and I will go back to London. Those are indisputable facts.