‘You make a most excellent taxi,’ I grin, as he deposits me by the sea wall. ‘What’s the fare?’
He piles my bags up. The boat is already here, moored just off the bay, and I’m suddenly full of panicky, ‘I’m not ready yet’ emotion because this is it.
‘On the house,’ he says, and then he swings around when someone yells his name, sharp and cut through with alarm. I follow his gaze and we both see Brianne running down the dirt track from the shop towards us. She’s gasping for breath by the time she draws close, visibly distressed.
‘Cam,’ she rasps, red-eyed. ‘It’s Raff. Tara went to the pub for her shift and couldn’t get any answer when she knocked.’
My stomach does a sickly dip.
Cam shakes his head because Brianne’s face already tells us the next part of the story.
‘Dolores had the spare key. She went in and found him stone cold in bed.’ Brianne closes her eyes and tears spill from her lashes. ‘He went to sleep and didn’t wake up, the silly old goat.’
‘Oh no,’ I whisper, sitting down heavily on the sea wall, aware my fingers are shaking when I press them against my mouth. Cam holds Brianne as she cries, and I look away when I see he’s in tears too. He steers his wife across to sit beside me on the wall, then sandwiches her between us, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.
I put my arm around Brianne’s shoulders and squeeze her tight. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.
Brianne shakes her head. ‘Dolores is in bits. Delta too.’
My heart hurts for them. Dolores and her brother were chalk and cheese but still each other’s biggest fans, and Delta adored him like a father. Raff was too big a personality for such a small community to lose, it’s going to devastate them.
Brianne pulls a folded blue note from her pocket. ‘She asked me to give you this if I caught you.’
I dab my eyes dry and smooth the paper open on my knee.
Cleo, can you stay a while longer? I know the answer is probably no, but if you can, I could really use a friend. Delta x
Sometimes in life you’re asked to go out on a limb and do something, even when you know it will have repercussions on other areas of your life. You step up or you don’t. I know Delta would understand if Brianne went back without me, but I think of the patchwork blanket and everything it represents. Friendship. Sisterhood. Love. The boat sails without me today.
I’d say every living soul on the island is packed into the Salvation Arms tonight. I’ve been behind the bar most of the afternoon with Delta on a stool close by. She cried buckets when I walked into the pub earlier, and poor Dolores looks glassy-eyed, a radio that’s lost signal. People have turned up with plates of sandwiches and all kinds of other stuff; we’ve set it out on a hastily erected trestle table over on the far side of the room. Carmen made her way from her house at the far end of the village with a huge Guinness cake balanced on top of the bars of her walking frame, and it really touched me when she quietly took off her gunmetal-grey shawl and wrapped it around Dolores’s shoulders. The warmest wool on the island had never been more needed.
‘No one’s money is any good in here today,’ I say, when someone tries to pay me for their drinks. It was the only instruction I was given when I stepped behind the bar. Dolores issued strict orders to unlock the doors for the islanders and to not let anyone pay a cent.
‘You okay?’ I say, heading around the other side of the bar with a cup of tea for Delta just after nine. She’s held up heroically all afternoon but she must be dead on her feet. ‘You look knackered.’ It’s noisy in the bar, so many people eager to share their stories and anecdotes about Raff. I’ve heard outrageous tales, all true no doubt. He was a man who burst at the seams with life. There’s music too. A couple of Raff’s oldest friends have set up in one corner with an accordion and tin whistle, joined at some point by Ailsa on guitar and Erin’s tall husband, Luke, island doctor and dubious fiddle player. If you were to look through the steamed-up pub window you could easily mistake it for a New Year’s Eve celebration, entirely fitting for a man who danced through life like a party streamer. Such joy, people have said to me. Such a rogue, others have said. And then there are those who’ve told me quieter stories about a man who turned up with school shoes for their kids when money was tight, and who sent Sunday lunch to people who were alone or under the weather. It feels very much as if Salvation has lost its father tonight.