“I’m sorry,” I said, reeling from what I’d done. “Saffy. I’m so, so sorry.”
Her face crumpled, her eyes filling with tears and a sob escaping her mouth. For a moment the perfected mask of teenage haughtiness fell, and her hurt was laid nakedly before me—just for a second, she was my little girl again, reeling from the fact that I had struck her. That I had crossed a line I had promised never, ever to cross.
I reached for her arm, but she pulled away from me, her hand still clutching her face.
I turned and ran into the kitchen, searching the tiny icebox of the fridge for ice. Nothing. I grabbed a rag and held it under the cold tap, then returned to the living room.
But Saffy had gone.
The front door gaped open like a wound.
SAPPHIRE, 1998
I
Sapphire stumbles blindly across the road away from the Longing.
It’s early, the sky like polished silver, the ocean sinewy and muscular, crackling as it reaches the stones at the edge of the causeway. She turns, out of breath from anger and wading, and looks back at the bothy. What a shithole. No KFC or McDonald’s on the whole bloody island. And the lighthouse—she’s always loved the idea of lighthouses, the romance of a building designed to throw light out across the ocean to keep ships safe and draw them home. But this one is creepy. It’s tall and white with big sections of flaked paint, and the windows are smashed. It doesn’t even work as a lighthouse. It’s just a big phallic eyesore.
The cool salty air has taken the sting away from where her mum slapped her. She narrows her eyes and watches the bothy, wishing she could set it alight with her mind. What kind of mother hits their kid like that? And after dragging them all up here, too, to the arse-end of nowhere, right in the middle of Saffy’s exams. Saffy loves her school back in York. She loves her friends and her boyfriend, Jack, who she’s been seeing for six months.
She hates her mum. She wishes she would just die and let Saffy be adopted by someone normal. Maybe her biological dad will come back and he’ll have a nice wife and some other kids and Saffy will have an actual normal life. Not one that involves living on boats and sometimes even in tents, and now a bothy on an island. A life with boundaries and bedtimes and clothes that don’t come from charity shops.
Lately, she’s been thinking about her stepdad, Sean. How much she misses him. Things were normal when he was alive, and they were happy. Even her mum was different. She wasn’t as thin as she is now, but more importantly she was kind of calm. Now she has this weird, nervous energy. Skittish as a river bird. And dazed, as if she’s half asleep or permanently daydreaming. Sean was the one who made everything wonderful. He was like sunshine, bringing out the colors in everyone he met.
When Liv had told her that Sean had been injured in a car accident, Saffy had asked, “Is he going to die?” because this was her worst fear. And when Liv said yes, it was likely that he would, Saffy had promised herself that she would be there when he did. It was what she’d held on to, the promise that she’d hold his hand, that the last thing he’d see was her there with him. She couldn’t change the fact that he wasn’t her real dad, but she could be there for him when he died.
But Liv insisted that Saffy go home with her uncle Liam, and nothing Saffy said or did persuaded her otherwise. Saffy wailed and pleaded, but still Liam took her firmly by the hand and drove her home. Not even an hour had passed before the phone rang with the news that Sean had passed.
If Sean had been her real dad, her mum would have let her stay. She’s sure of it. But because he wasn’t, she was told to leave, and therefore the precious chance to hold his hand as he slipped into the next world was ripped from her forever. He died without knowing how much she cared. She will never, ever forgive her mother for that.
A sob forms in her throat as she stumbles on blindly toward the clutch of trees across the road, hugging the grimoire to her chest.