I headed up to the lantern room at the very top. The stairs narrowed at the last flight, and the climb into the little room itself was a bit of a squeeze. I’d only spent a moment or two in this room the day before, but now I was able to appreciate the space and the views it afforded across the island. The sun was beginning to burn off the fog, flinging out the beauty of Lòn Haven—the vast emerald ocean, muscular, shining cliffs, hills dotted with cairns and lush forests. Dusty floorboards creaked beneath my feet, but they seemed in good enough order, and the room had been cleaned and tidied recently. Perhaps this was where Mr. Roberts was going to install his writing studio.
I took several pictures of the walls, then the views, with the Polaroid camera. The views would serve as my inspiration for the mural. Yes, I had the symbols that Mr. Roberts wanted, but a mural requires depth—layers of images, if you like. So I needed to think about the base layer. A palette of oceanic colors, even. I took more photos, careful not to overthink it too much—whatever drew my eye. The seals on the rocks below. The lavender tufts of heather in the fields, the white-tipped waves, the way they kept springing up and charging like white horses. The strange, black-headed seabirds hovering in the wind outside.
And I thought about how I arrived here. Here, in this lighthouse, with these girls and this life. I’d felt so proud accepting my place at the Glasgow School of Art. I was set to conquer the world, one brushstroke at a time. Later, in my gown and cap and in the toilet of a Starbucks, I’d discovered I was pregnant. I’d had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fling with a textiles postgrad. He was an exchange student from the Netherlands and I’d admired his crochet sculptures. He was already long gone, backpacking around Europe.
A termination wasn’t in the cards; a school friend had had one and relayed the procedure to a group of us in tears. Excruciating, she said, and humiliating. I preferred denial, right up until I went into labor and the midwives left me alone with a tiny blonde cherub that was apparently mine. I moved the cherub and me into a bedsit in Bristol. Over time, I got used to the routine of staggering through the days, drunk with sleep deprivation.
I fell in love. Sean was an artist I met while teaching at Bristol College. We were happy. Sean taught ceramics and encouraged me to exhibit my work. We both had a collection at the Lime Tree Gallery at one point, and they sold so well that we were able to go on our first family holiday. We went to Nice. We had Luna, then Clover. They looked like twins, despite being two and half years apart, both with Sean’s big blue Irish eyes.
Clover had just turned two when Sean went out for a drink with a friend. Peter was three times over the limit when he took a bend at a hundred and eight miles an hour. The car spun out and hit a wall. Peter was killed instantly; Sean clung on for three days. They told us to say our good-byes and switched off the machine.
It’s a blur, that soul-shredding chapter of my life. We were homeless a lot, drifting from place to place and relying on the mercy of friends. I was a single mother to three girls, trying to juggle painting commissions and sporadic teaching contracts with school runs and homework.
I thought of the sleeping bodies of my daughters tangled beside me when I woke that morning, and most mornings, legs and arms akimbo.
Did I love them?
More than my own life.
Would I have done it all again, knowing what I know now?
No, I don’t think I would.
I’d had such high hopes for motherhood. And I wanted everything for my children. But every single day I had to confront the glaring reality that I simply wasn’t able to provide the kind of life they deserved. And it crushed me.
III
I took the stairs back down, holding tightly to the banister that was only partially secured to the wall of the lighthouse. I tried not to look down into the abyss of that tall stone tower. I was used to heights—murals usually involved cherry pickers or the cranes people associate with firefighters rescuing cats from tall trees. But the drop here was nerve-jangling. I had good balance, decent core strength, yet even so, I took those stairs as carefully as I could, keeping my eyes away from the vortex of the center of the lighthouse. One slip, one distraction from each solid step would land me on solid concrete and break my back. Or kill me.