“No,” she tells Brodie. She wraps her arms around his neck and forces herself to smile. “Not too early at all.”
LIV, 1998
I
The days passed in a whirlwind of paint and school runs. The project of painting the lighthouse quickly proved to be the distraction I’d hoped for. I didn’t have time to think about the phone call from the hospital, or about what another cervical scan might reveal. My days were carved up neatly by paint colors and sections mapped out by the mural, which I’d transcribed to several pieces of paper fixed in a circular shape and taped to the dining table in the bothy, along with Polaroids of the sections of wall where they were to be painted. Each weekday I dropped the girls off to school at eight a.m., then worked solidly until I collected them from after-school club at five thirty, often returning to the Longing once they were in bed. I enjoyed Finn’s conversational tour of Lòn Haven, and occasionally his death metal tapes. Here, on Lòn Haven, I was untethered from the past. Everything I’d carried for the last fifteen years—the shock of my pregnancy with Saffy, the grief at losing Sean, and now that terrifying phone call—was gobbled up by the ravenous tide. And witnessing the Longing transform, stroke by stroke, into something a little less knackered, its former glory beginning to creep back, was rewarding. I felt that, maybe, I could start again, too.
One night, when I’d decided to give myself the evening “off,” there was a knock at the door of the bothy. I thought it might be Finn, eager to get going at the new section he’d finished plastering that day.
But it wasn’t Finn. It was a group of chatting, excited women. Isla stood at the head of them.
“We’ve come to show you the mareel,” she said grandly.
“The what?”
“See for yourself,” one of the other women said, sweeping a hand toward the bay. I stepped outside to see what she was referring to. The tide was shimmering with an astral blue light, as though it was filled with fireflies.
“The mareel, also known as sea sparkle,” one of the women said. “Scientists know it’s caused by bioluminescent microorganisms.”
“It means good fortune for those who see it,” said Mirrin, a short, stout woman with a mane of gold hair, “and even more for those who swim in it.”
Isla held up a wet suit and winked. “Well now, isn’t it lucky I’ve got a spare? Come and join us. I insist!”
I got changed quickly and followed the group to the beach, where the ocean greeted us with softly rolling waves, iridescent with trapped, glowing light. There were eight of us in the group. Mirrin, who worked part-time at the grocery store in town and sold paintings in the small art gallery owned by her partner, Greer, who was also there. Ruqayya was a widow who ran the island’s mobile library. Ling was a shaman, yogi, and sculptor. Both Ailsa and Louisa were veterinarians who had relocated from England twenty years ago to run a small animal sanctuary on the west coast of Lòn Haven.
“How often does it happen?” I said, clasping my arms across my chest. The icy water was only up to my ankles but I was shaking from the cold.
Ruqayya stood next to me as she tucked her long gray hair into a swimming cap. “Once or twice a year,” she said. “We always make sure we try and swim in it. The Vikings believed it was a healing tide. That if you have an affliction, mental or physical, and you swam in it, you’ll be healed.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Not when I first moved here,” she said. “But I had terrible arthritis. My fingers were all twisted. And now look.” She held out her hands. They looked strong and perfectly straight.
She stepped forward and lowered herself to swim. As her body moved, the water responded, each stroke of her arm streaking the water electric blue.
“Come on,” another woman urged gently from my left. Ailsa. She threw me a bright smile, her face lit up by the glow. “You don’t know how long it’ll last. And you’ll miss your chance.”