Chapter 8 #2
“Well, it’s a seal—”
“Like the ones you took photos of the other day?”
“Mate,” I say to Logan. “Maybe let Ellie finish speaking, eh?”
“I know what a selkie is.” Rosie puts her hand up like this is school. “It’s a seal that can turn into a person.”
“That’s right, Rosie.” Ellie smiles. “This story is about a selkie and a fisherman.”
“Like Da!” Logan says.
I wink at him then mime zipping my lips shut. He grins and mimics the gesture.
“All right,” Ellie begins. “A long time ago there was a fisherman who lived alone in a cottage by the sea.”
I notice her voice changing. Not dramatically, but it takes on a different rhythm as she tells the story.
“One evening he was walking along a shore much like this one, and he saw a woman sitting on the rocks. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Beside her, folded on a rock, was a seal skin.”
The twins lean in, fascinated.
“The fisherman knew at once what she was: a selkie, a seal who’d shed her skin to walk on land in human form. And he knew that if he took the skin and hid it, she wouldn’t be able to return to the sea. She’d have to stay.”
“That’s mean,” Rosie says.
“Aye, it is. But the fisherman was lonely, and he wanted her to stay. So he took the skin and hid it, and the selkie woman stayed with him. They married and had children, and for years they were happy—or at least, he was happy. She was kind and good, and she loved her children. But sometimes, on stormy nights, she would stand at the window and look out at the sea.”
Logan’s mouth is slightly open. Rosie has her chin in her hands. The wind picks up slightly, blowing the loose strands of Ellie’s hair. She tucks them back.
“Then one day, one of the children found the seal skin hidden away in the rafters. The child didn’t know what it was, so they brought it to their mother.
And the moment the selkie saw it, she knew she had to go.
She kissed her children, then she walked down to the shore, put on the skin, and slipped into the water. And she never came back.”
“That’s sad,” Rosie says quietly.
“It is,” Ellie agrees. “But as much as the selkie loved her children, the sea was part of her, and she knew she couldn’t be whole without it.”
I don’t say anything. The story has landed somewhere uncomfortable for me. I’m sure Ellie didn’t mean for it to hit close to home. We’re by the sea and there are seals in those waters, so it’s probably just the first story she thought of.
Still. A fisherman. A woman who leaves.
I take another sip of tea and keep my thoughts to myself, but I wonder what the twins make of the story. Logan’s face is scrunched up like he’s working out a complicated puzzle.
“Ellie?” he says after a moment.
“Yes?”
“I have a question.”
“I’m listening.”
“Who do you think would win in a fight, a selkie or a kraken?”
Okay, so maybe the story isn’t troubling the twins as much as it is me.
“Right, you two,” I say. “Off you go. Burn off those biscuits. Leave Ellie and me to finish our teas in peace.”
They scramble away, and then it’s just me and Ellie, sitting on the rock with the sea in front of us and a couple of packets of biscuits between us.
“You’re good at that,” I say. “The storytelling.”
A smile tugs at her lips. She fiddles with the lid of the flask.
“Though for the record, I didn’t exactly steal Leah’s seal skin.”
Ellie frowns, then her eyes widen. “Oh God, that story. I didn’t mean—”
“I know. It’s just a folktale. You didn’t mean anything by it.”
She glances towards the kids. “Do you think it upset them?”
“Ha, didn’t you hear Logan’s question? Nah, they loved it. You had them hooked from the start.”
The twins’ voices drift over to us. A shriek, a laugh. Aye, definitely not upset.
Ellie turns her paper cup in her hands. “Still, I’m sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to apologise for.” I look out at the water.
“And anyway, I suppose in some ways Leah did feel trapped. It wasn’t deliberate.
But things happened fast. She got pregnant, I asked her to marry me because I thought it was the right thing to do, and before either of us had really stopped to think, we were a family. ”
For a little while, neither of us speaks. Then Ellie says, “Can I ask you something?”
“Aye.”
“Only . . . it’s about Leah. But you did start talking about her at the library, and now you’ve brought her up again, so—”
“It’s fine, Ellie. Seriously. Ask away.”
She takes a deep breath. “All right. Well . . . I know a bit. Everyone does—nobody’s business is private in Ardmara. But I’ve only heard about it secondhand, and I just thought . . . But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s completely fine.”
I pick up a small stone and turn it in my fingers. A pair of gannets are diving maybe half a mile out, folding their wings and plunging like white arrows.
“Leah wasn’t . . . she wasn’t built for this.
For the routine of it. For small-town life.
She only came to Ardmara for a summer job, for a bit of money and to try something different.
She wasn’t expecting a pair of kids out of it.
But she did try, for a while anyway. But when the twins were about two, she left. ”
“I’m sorry.”
“Aye. Well.” I turn the stone over. “She comes back now and then. Stays for a bit. Sees the kids. Then off she goes again.”
There’s a little more to it than that. Leah is .
. . well, she isn’t an easy person to get along with.
But she is Logan and Rosie’s mother—and my wife, if only on paper—and it doesn’t feel right to speak badly of her.
Though I doubt she’d show me the same courtesy if it were the other way round. No, I know she wouldn’t.
“But . . . you’re still married to her,” Ellie prompts.
“Aye. But when she comes back, we’re not . . . I mean, it’s just about the kids, you know. She and I . . . well, put it this way, I don’t give her a kiss when I see her.”
“Okay.” No follow-up question, no pity, no judgement. Just “okay”.
I flick the stone towards the water. It falls short, landing on the wet rock with a click.
I clear my throat. “Anyway, that’s the story, and now you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth.”
“Thanks for trusting me with it.” Ellie finishes her tea. “Fancy one last biscuit before I tidy them away?”
“Aye, go on, then. I think I’ve earned it.”
She chuckles. “You definitely have. Custard cream or chocolate digestive? Or one of each?”
I nab a chocolate digestive. She takes one too, and for a few moments we sit there munching in silence, looking out at the water. But it isn’t awkward. It feels . . . companionable.
Once we’re done, Ellie packs the things away. I look over at Logan and Rosie, who are crouched by a pool, their heads nearly touching as they peer into it.
“Right,” I call to them. “Finish up. We’re heading back.”
“Already?” Logan protests.
“But I’ve not found a green anemone yet!” Rosie points out.
“There’s always next week. C’mon, let’s get going.”
We pick our way back across the rocks, the twins in front again, leaping from one patch of dry stone to the next.
I’m keeping a close eye on them when Ellie’s boot slips out from under her and she lurches sideways.
I don’t even think about it—my hand shoots out, catching her at the waist. It’s pure instinct, the same impulse that steadied her in the water on Wednesday.
But this isn’t the water. There’s no emergency, no cold. Just the curve of her waist beneath my hand and the sudden awareness of how close she is.
I let go quickly. Perhaps too quickly.
“Cheers,” she says, straightening up. Her cheeks are pink, but that could be the wind.
“Aye. Careful on the dark patches, remember.”
We climb up off the rocks and onto the narrow path that leads back into town.
The twins kick stones, shove each other occasionally, and argue about something I can’t quite make out.
As for me, I’m trying very hard not to dwell on the fact that my hand was just on Ellie’s waist. It was nothing.
Just a reflex. Someone slips, you catch them. End of story.
And yet my hand still remembers the shape of her through her jacket, which is ridiculous considering the whole thing lasted about a second.
After a while the rooftops of Ardmara come into view, and then the harbour.
“Da!” Logan calls back. “What time are we going to soft play?”
“Half one. Same as always.”
“Is Finn going to be there?”
“Should be, aye.”
“And Isla and Lily?” Rosie checks.
“Aye, same as every week.”
Rosie waits for us to catch up then falls into step beside Ellie. “Do you like soft play?” she asks.
“I’ve never been.”
Rosie’s eyes go wide, as though Ellie has just confessed to never having tried chocolate. “You’ve never been?”
“It’s not really somewhere you go if you don’t have kids, and it wasn’t there when I was wee.”
“You should come today!” Logan says, spinning around to walk backwards.
“Turn around before you trip,” I tell him.
“You should come,” Rosie agrees. “It’s really fun.”
“Can she come, Da?” Logan asks.
Jesus. What is it with these two and inviting Ellie to things all of a sudden? They’re putting me in an awkward position here. “You’d be very welcome,” I say to Ellie, because what else can I say?
She laughs. “That’s kind of you, but I think I’ve intruded enough for one day. Maybe another time. I’d like to see this famous soft play.”
“I wouldn’t set your expectations too high. It’s a soft play in a leisure centre. It smells funny and the coffee is terrible.”
“You’re really selling it.”
A few minutes later we reach the harbour. “Well, that was lovely,” Ellie says. “Thanks for letting me tag along.” She takes the tote bag from me and slings it over her shoulder.
“Thanks for the tea,” I say. “And the biscuits.”
“Bye, Ellie!” Rosie waves.
“Bye. Thanks for not dropping your book into a rock pool. You were very responsible with it.”
Logan says bye too, although he’s already tugging at my hand, keen to get moving again. Standing still has never really been his thing.
“See you, Ellie,” I say.
“See you, Douglas.”
She turns and walks along the waterfront, the wind catching those loose strands of hair again. I watch her for a moment, then steer the twins up the hill towards home.