Chapter 19
19
It was another hour before the egg-yolk sun finally sank beneath the distant waves. Pip hadn’t asked if I wanted to stay with him, but he’d left two chairs out, and handed me a glass of cider, so I took it as an invitation.
We’d sat mostly in silence, and I’d treated it as another learning opportunity in being still, doing ‘nothing’. I tried not to view savouring the sunset with a man whose presence made every nerve hum as a task to tick off my never-ending mental to-do list. I almost managed it, too.
‘Four days until you go,’ Pip said, when he finally stood up and stretched. ‘Any plans for how you’ll make the most of them?’
I restrained from suggesting I spent them trailing around after him, or grilling his dad about my mother, instead mumbling something about baking, helping Lily with the barn and whatever she had in mind for wedding décor.
‘You should visit Hugh’s stables. Jasmine does horse rides for the tourists. They pass the best place for dolphin spotting, and by the Siskin Stone.’
‘I’ve never ridden before.’
‘They’ve got horses well used to novices. And she’s bound to do it for free, given the scandalously cheap price Hugh offered you for Thursday.’
‘I’ll think about it, thank you.’
I instructed myself not to mind that he hadn’t suggested coming with me. Pip was a farmer. He had a life to be getting on with, including whatever needed doing with forty-thousand free-range chickens and their eggs.
We slowly walked back up the path, which was easier this time because I felt more adapted to the island terrain and so less cautious. Still, Pip took my hand in the shadowy stretches, and helped me over the stile where I’d parked the bike.
‘Do you want to leave it at the farm again?’ he asked, nodding at the bike, his nose giving a puzzled twitch.
‘No. I’ll ride it back.’ I hadn’t told him about the horrible smell, because I didn’t want him to feel bad about it happening on Hawkins land, so while I definitely wouldn’t risk leaving the bike exposed again, I also didn’t want him to walk me back alongside it. The moon had appeared between the clouds, and was full enough to mean I’d see at least something of the track back to the B&B. Besides, every hour I spent with Pip, my feelings only grew deeper. Many more sunsets on the beach and moonlit walks were going to make leaving Siskin with a broken heart unavoidable, whether we kept things friendly or not.
‘Are you sure? I can walk with you to the far gate.’ He did a rubbish job of hiding his disappointment, but I nodded firmly.
‘Thanks for a wonderful day. I’ll see you around.’
I clambered onto the bike and did my best to minimise the wobbles as I lumbered down the path, knowing he’d be watching.
‘Take care in Clover Field,’ Pip called after me. ‘The gate can be stubborn, but the cows will still be out so double-check it’s shut.’
By the time I’d reached Clover Field, a cloud obscured the moonlight, so I wheeled the bike instead. I squashed my nerves at navigating a field of half-tonne beasts alone in the dark, and hurried to the other side with no incidents, giving the gate a rattle to ensure it was closed before using the glow from the barn now up ahead to navigate the rest of the way.
The ground floor was empty, so I tiptoed upstairs, opening the yellow room door as quietly as possible before dumping my bag on the chair, opting for the soft bedside lamp and clicking on the kettle while I jumped in the shower.
I added a splash of milk to my decaf tea and took an absent-minded sip as I walked over to the bed.
My brain interpreted the smell a second before the taste hit my tongue.
I’d have smelled it the second I poured it if the room weren’t full of steamy lavender from my shower. The milk was beyond sour. My initial thought, apart from utter disgust, was confusion that it could taste so awful and not be set like Greek yoghurt. I peered at the mug, spotting a couple of flecks of yellowy-brown yuckiness. When I took the milk jug back out of the mini-fridge and inspected it, it appeared fine until I gave it a stir, the subsequent odour sending bile rising up my throat as I lifted out the spoon, now covered in thick, nasty goo.
After braving a tentative sniff from a safe distance and analysing the goo under the lamp, the only possibility I could come up with was that it was a big dollop of bird poo. I tried to recall the droppings in the chicken coop, but couldn’t remember clearly enough to identify whether this was the same. Besides, all bird poop could look identical, for all I knew.
I rinsed out the mug, my scrunched-up face turned away, and then investigated the kettle, other mug and plate, neatly wrapped cookie and everything else on the refreshment tray or in the fridge, running through different possibilities of how the milk jug had become contaminated. It had clearly been refilled since I’d last made a drink that morning. Had Lily or Malcolm left it near an open window, or on an outside table, and a bird had somehow, freakishly, managed to poop in the mug without them noticing?
Or, perhaps, a chicken wandered into the house at some point during the day. Except that we’d been cooking all morning, and someone would have noticed a chicken strutting about. Malcolm would have shut the birds in the coop as soon as they all arrived home.
I wondered whether I could ask Lily a few innocent-sounding questions about when she’d replenished the milk, or where she did it. Whether a bird had got in the house at all.
I briefly wondered whether to show her the jug and ask her straight out if she could figure it out.
One thing stopped me.
It was the second unexplainable, revolting thing that had happened in the past two days.
While I had initially brushed off the bike-juice as nothing to do with me personally, I couldn’t confidently dismiss this as an accident. Which meant it was a deliberate act of nastiness that I was meant to discover.
The mounting fear at the thought that someone would direct such a sinister act of animosity towards me was enough to send me running to the bathroom.
Once my stomach was horribly empty, my throat raw, I went over the rest of the room inch by inch, trying desperately to work out who had had the opportunity to sneak in and deposit the poop. It had to be someone who’d arrived at the beach after us, or knew that I’d be staying on after they’d gone. Unfortunately, that ruled out only Pip – it could be any of these other near-strangers, whose values and customs I had barely begun to understand.
That inevitably led me on to motive. I thought about how Celine had dragged Pip away from our conversation to play volleyball, going all out with her teasing and hair-tossing.
There was also Aster, who had made several rude asides about me. And what about Gabe? Did he harbour resentment about whatever had gone awry with Mum, seeing my sudden appearance as the perfect chance to exact revenge?
Richard, while I was trolling through potential suspects, had ignored me completely. Did he share Aster’s misgivings about mainlanders?
Then there were all the others. I couldn’t ignore the fact that Lily and Malcolm had the best opportunity. Perhaps it was one of the kids, playing a hilarious island-style prank, and I was getting all worked up for nothing. The bike was simply a coincidence.
I tried to circle back to believing that Clucker or Pecky had snuck in and left a present behind in the milk jug when no one was looking. I needed to at least check the carton in the kitchen fridge in the morning.
But my intuition wasn’t buying it.
Feeling more alone than at any other moment in my lonely life so far, I brushed my teeth until my gums bled, flicked the lock on the bedroom door and checked under the covers one last time before sliding into bed.
Unable to think of any other way to try to settle my frantic nerves, knowing that there was at least some chance I would find an answer there, I reached for the letters. I was grateful that the next one according to date was written by my mother. With the taste of that tea still lingering in the back of my mouth, I needed the comfort of her familiar hand.
11 January 1988
Gabriel,
While it may be considered cowardly to hide behind a letter, you yourself have said that writing words down can be the safest way to make sure they are taken as meant, and not misheard. Besides, I have waited up every night this week hoping you would ask me how I am, or would simply take a proper look and so notice what is happening to your wife.
You haven’t asked, so a letter it is.
My darling husband, while my love for you is as sure and as strong as the day we married, I have failed as your wife in making your dream come true.
I am not happy here. I am, in fact, more miserable than I thought possible. I have tried (surely you have seen how hard I have tried?) to be a capable farmer’s wife, a dutiful daughter-in-law. A true islander, in spirit if not in blood.
I simply cannot do it.
Your family hate me. The island women scorn me.
Those infernal chickens wish to thwart my every move.
I don’t know what I detest more: the weather or your mother ordering me about like an incompetent child, saddling me with tedious, loathsome tasks and then complaining when I don’t complete them with the skill or speed of someone born here.
I resent how all you have left for me is exhausted dregs after yet another long, lonely day.
Gabriel – I married you to share a life together. We speak less now than when limited to a weekly phone call.
I think I must go home, before this farm destroys any trace of the woman you fell in love with.
My question is – will you come with me?
Nellie
I wept as I read the letter. Picturing my strong, proud mother feeling isolated, belittled, so thoroughly out of place, made my heart ache. She’d been thirty-seven before she’d dared to risk it all for love. And perhaps it was no wonder she never took a chance like that again. After four days on the island, I could only imagine how brutal it must have been to have the Hawkinses’ rejection as a permanent housemate. I wondered whether she’d encountered doctored mugs of tea, or worse.
Despite my raw emotions, I felt compelled to read another letter, unable to settle until I knew Gabe’s reply, and trusting that it wouldn’t make me feel even worse.
12 January 1988
My dearest Nellie,
There would only ever be one answer to your question:
Yes.
I would go to the ends of the earth for you, my love. Your doubt on this matter is proof that I am the one who has failed.
(Although, I must help Da with the calving, first.)
With faith, hope and love
Your wretch of a husband,
G
Comforted that, at this point, Gabriel had chosen Mum over his family and the farm, and she’d still had someone on her side, I tucked the letters back in my bag and turned off the light.