Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
ELLIE
The library opens one Saturday a month, and I always get the following Wednesday off in lieu. Today is that Wednesday, and the day is mine to do with as I please.
Usually, I’d go for a walk along the coast, maybe with my friend Blair if she’s free. Pop in on Mum, do some reading, dabble in whatever hobby I’m currently into. A quiet, unhurried day, which is exactly how I like it.
Or at least, that’s normally how I like it. Today I’m toying with another idea.
It’s a gorgeous, bright day, and through my kitchen window the sea is flat and glittering.
It’s been two days since Douglas made that comment about the best view of Ardmara.
I know he was only stating a fact, the way someone might say the bins are collected on a Friday, and yet here I am, still turning it over.
The thing is, he’s right. I’ve taken the ferry to Corraig and back before, and from the deck of the Calabrae on the journey home, Ardmara is striking. But I’ve never actually photographed the town from the water—at least, not since I took up photography properly.
Now, though, I really want a shot of Ardmara from the water, even though I don’t have an old archive shot to pair it with. It would still be a lovely addition to the display. Plus, on a day like today, with this light, the picture could be stunning.
And if it gives me something to talk about the next time Douglas comes into the library—Oh, I actually took your advice and went out on the water, and you were right, the view was incredible—well, that’s just a bonus. A very small, entirely incidental bonus that I’m not thinking about at all.
I could do a day trip to Corraig and get a photo that way, but then I’m not in control of the angle or the timing. Whereas if I hired my own boat . . .
I don’t do things like this. I am not a spontaneous person. My life runs on routine and quiet rhythms.
But today the light is perfect, and I have the whole day free, and if I stand here humming and hawing much longer, I’m going to talk myself out of it.
So I pick up my phone and make a call.
Creel stacks are piled along the quayside, coils of rope looped beside them, while gulls strut about on the low stone wall like they own the place.
The harbour smells the way it always does—fish, salt, engine oil—the scent so deeply embedded in the stone and timber that I’m fairly sure you could powerwash the whole place and it would still linger.
I’ve walked past this harbour thousands of times. I could navigate it blindfolded. But standing here with my camera bag over my shoulder, about to get into a boat by myself, everything looks a little different. Sharper. More real somehow.
Rab is already here, leaning against his car, his arms folded. A trailer is attached to the back of the car, and a white motorboat sits in it. The boat is modest, but it looks clean and well-kept.
“Well, well,” Rab says, watching my approach with an amused expression. “Ellie Macpherson, woman of adventure.”
“Afternoon, Rab.”
“I’ll be honest, when I saw your name come up on my phone, I thought you were calling about Thursday’s setlist.” Rab and I play together in a folk band called the Celtic Kicks.
He’s on accordion, I’m on fiddle, and our other member, Struan, is on guitar and vocals.
“Didn’t peg you for the seafaring type.”
“I’m not really. It’s for a photography project, for the library.”
“Fair enough. Your mum know you’re off gallivanting?”
“I’m twenty-six, Rab.”
He winks at me then pushes off from the car and claps his hands together. “Right, then. Let’s get you sorted.”
Rab has a side hustle hiring out a motorboat to tourists, or apparently to me. When I called him earlier, he suggested early afternoon, and in the hours since we spoke, I’ve somehow managed not to talk myself out of this.
Rab climbs onto the trailer and gestures for me to step up beside him. He walks me through the basics with the confidence of a man who’s been on boats since before I was born. Throttle here. Tiller there. Forward, neutral, reverse. He lifts a red cord from beside the controls and holds it up.
“Kill cord. Clip it to yourself. If you go over, it cuts the engine.”
“If I go over?”
“You won’t go over. But if you do, it cuts the engine.”
Reassuring.
He shows me how to start the motor, how to steer, how to read the fuel gauge. It’s a lot of information delivered quickly, and I nod along, trying to commit it all to memory while also trying to look like I’m not nervous—which, for the record, I absolutely am.
“And you’ll know to give the Sgeirean Glas a wide berth, of course,” Rab adds, almost as an afterthought.
I nod. The Sgeirean Glas, or the Grey Skerries, are a cluster of rocks out beyond the harbour mouth. “Aye,” I say. “Of course.”
Rab produces a clipboard. “Sorry about the paperwork, but you know how it is.”
I sign the waiver without reading it too carefully, partly because I trust Rab and partly because I suspect that if I read the words personal liability and risk of injury or death in black and white, I might change my mind.
Then Rab reverses the car down the slipway and eases the boat into the harbour. The hull meets the water with a gentle splash.
“Right,” he says. “In you get.”
I step down into the boat. It dips under my weight and I grab the side, steadying myself. Okay, wow. You really notice the water on a boat this size. Not like on the ferry to Corraig.
Rab tosses a rope into the boat. “You’ve got her for an hour. Have fun!”
I clip on the kill cord, take a breath, and start the engine. It coughs once and then settles into a low, steady rumble. I push the throttle forwards and the boat begins to move, nosing past the moored fishing boats, towards the open water beyond the harbour wall.
The moment I clear the shelter of the harbour, the breeze hits me—cool, clean, salt-edged—and the boat lifts under me with the first roll of open water. My stomach dips, and I tighten my grip on the tiller.
For a little while I keep my eyes firmly ahead. One thing at a time: steer, breathe, try not to think about how small this boat suddenly feels.
Once I’m further out, though, I risk a look back.
Oh. This is what Douglas meant.
From here, Ardmara opens out in a way it doesn’t on land.
The harbour looks smaller, tidier. The buildings stack up behind it along the hillside, the old kirk ruins distinct in the afternoon light.
The view makes my fingers itch for my camera, but I push a little further out so I can get the whole town in the shot.
Once I’m satisfied, I pull the throttle back and let the boat drift while I reach for my camera.
It’s decent, not top of the range, but more than enough for what I need.
I bought it secondhand last autumn, when photography was the new hobby and knitting was being quietly retired to the back of the wardrobe along with two unfinished scarves and a hat that looked like a deflated mushroom.
I lift the camera and frame the shot. The town fills the viewfinder, sharp and vivid, the light doing exactly what I’d hoped. I take a few frames, adjusting the angle, then glance at the screen. They’re good. Better than good.
I ease the throttle forwards again, wanting to see how the perspective changes.
As the town grows smaller, the hills behind it grow taller in proportion.
I take more photos. Then a few more. Each time I think I’ve got the shot, I spot something else I’d like to capture—a different angle on the harbour, the light catching the lighthouse, the sweep of the coastline curving away to the south—and I want to go just a little bit further.
The breeze is in my hair, pulling strands loose from my ponytail. The boat rises and falls, and the engine hums steadily beneath me. I realise I’m smiling, even though I’m out here on my own with no one to see it.
I never do things like this, things that sit outside the safe, familiar circuit of library, Mum’s house, home. Playing the fiddle at the pub is normally as far as it goes for me. It’s not that anyone stops me. It’s just that my life has a shape, and I tend to stay inside it.
But out here, with the water stretching around me and the town growing small behind me, I feel something I don’t quite have a word for. Giddiness, maybe. The sense of a world that is larger than my usual version of it.
I should do things like this more often.
I get the shots I came for, then check the time on my phone. I’ve still got thirty-five minutes before I need to return the boat. I could head back—I’ve got what I wanted—but for once I’m doing something spontaneous, something that’s mine, and I’d like to stretch the feeling a little longer.
I look around, shielding my eyes against the glare off the water. And that’s when I spot them.
Seals. A cluster of them, hauled out on dark rocks a little further out to sea. From here they’re just shapes, grey and brown lumps draped over the stone.
I raise my camera and zoom in, but even at full magnification, they’re too far away. If I could just get a bit closer—not close enough to disturb them, but close enough to get a decent shot—that would be pretty special.
I motor towards them, keeping my speed low. As I get nearer, I cut the engine back further, then further still. When I’m close enough that they look like actual seals rather than blobs on the rocks, I kill it altogether.
Through the viewfinder, they’re magnificent.
A large grey seal is sprawled across the highest point, head tipped up towards the sun, eyes closed, perfectly at ease.
Nearby, two smaller ones are pressed together, their coats dappled silver and brown.
Another is half in the water, just its head and shoulders visible, watching me with dark eyes and an expression of utter indifference.
There’s something about seals, something that always makes me think of old stories and all the strange, mythical things people used to believe lived in the sea.
I adjust the zoom. The light is gorgeous—bright and clean, catching the wet rock and turning the water around it almost luminous.
I frame the shot carefully, shifting the camera a fraction to get the composition right.
The big grey seal, the pair huddled together, the dark stone, the spray.
I press the shutter. Check the screen. Not quite.
The angle is slightly off. I reframe, adjust, shoot again.
Better. But—damn. The seal in the water turned its head away.
I wait. The boat rocks gently. The seal blinks, slow and unconcerned. I keep the camera raised, finger on the shutter, barely breathing.
The seal turns its head back. The light catches its whiskers, the curve of its jaw, the gleam of water on fur. I press the shutter three times in quick succession.
Yes. Got it. That’s the one.
I lower the camera to look at the screen, zooming in to check the focus, the sharpness, the way the light has caught every detail exactly as I hoped. It’s perfect.
Then the boat jolts sharply, and a horrible, scraping groan comes from beneath the hull. I stagger sideways, grabbing the side with one hand while the other clutches the camera to my chest.
For a few seconds, I just stand there, heart hammering.
What. Just. Happened.
Then I look over the edge.
Rock. Dark, barnacle-covered rock, just below the waterline. I’ve run aground.
Oh shit.
The boat is sitting wrong. Nose up, listing to one side. And the seals? They’re closer than I thought. I was so focused on the viewfinder I didn’t realise the boat was drifting towards them. Now the whole whiskered lot are peering at me with curiosity.
Oh no. The rocks the seals are on are just the visible part of a larger underwater shelf: the Sgeirean Glas, which Rab specifically warned me not to get too close to.
I’m an idiot.
I slide the camera back into its bag, then turn the key. The engine starts. I shift into reverse, nudge the throttle—and the boat shudders, a grinding vibration that travels up through the hull and into my feet. Metal on rock, straining and catching. I can feel it in my chest.
But we don’t move.
I kill the engine, hands shaking.
Right. Okay. Think.
I’m stuck. Stuck on a rock a long way from shore, definitely not within waving-for-help distance.
For about thirty seconds, genuine fear grips me. My pulse hammers in my ears, and my breath comes in short, tight bursts.
Get a grip, Ellie.
I press my palms flat on the side of the boat and force myself to breathe. The boat is wedged, not sinking. I’m fine. Just . . . stuck.
I pull my phone out. My hands are clumsy with adrenaline, and it takes two attempts to unlock the screen.
Thank God. I have signal.
But then a new emotion replaces the fear: embarrassment. Crushing, full-body embarrassment. Because who do I call? The coastguard?
No, that’d be too mortifying. Everyone would hear about it. I might as well take out a full-page advert in the local paper. Ellie Macpherson, of Ardmara Library, runs aground on rocks that every person in the town has known about since birth.
Rab, then. I can call Rab. He’ll come and get me. Except he’ll also tell everyone. Not maliciously—he doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body—but because it’s a good story, and good stories don’t stay private in Ardmara.
I’m still weighing up which flavour of humiliation I prefer when I hear an engine, low and steady, the sound carrying across the water.
I look and see a boat maybe two hundred metres away, making for the harbour, set to go right past me.
I don’t think, just react. I straighten—carefully, because the boat is still tilted and the last thing I need is to fall in—and wave one arm above my head.
“Hey!” My voice sounds thin and small with so much open water around me. “Hello! Over here!”
The boat keeps going. I wave harder, both arms now, the boat rocking beneath me.
“Help!”
For a horrible moment, nothing changes. The boat holds its course, and I think they haven’t seen me. I’m going to have to call Rab after all, or the coastguard, or maybe just live here on this rock with the seals—
The boat alters course, swinging towards me. They’ve seen me.
Oh, thank God. Thank God.
I lower my arms, relief flooding through me. Someone is coming. Someone will help. This is going to be fine. Embarrassing, but fine.
Then I look properly at the boat and realise I know it well, because I’ve photographed it dozens of times. I have pictures of it in every light and every kind of weather.
The Mary Beth.
Which means the person at the helm, the person who is about to witness me stranded on the rocks that every fisherman, sailor, and half-competent person in Ardmara knows to avoid—
No.
No, no, no.
Douglas Fraser is coming to rescue me. And I would rather be swallowed by the sea.