Chapter 35
About halfway from Carlinsrest to the Sgàthan Sìth cottages, the wind changed. I barely noticed at first, I was so wrapped up in my anger and the growing pain in my hand.
It blew from the north, bringing cold Highland air down into the Lowlands.
The earlier humidity of the day seized up in the rapid chill, wreathing the trees and hedgerows with a fine mist. The blue skies paled into bright white clouds.
It wasn’t long before they descended, and the previously shimmering roads disappeared behind a veil of cool white fog.
It was suddenly very quiet, as if all the birds in the trees could sense the change in the air and went hiding in the places they flew to when it stormed or hailed.
The tumult of my mind fell into a rare silence. As I marched on, I took my hoodie from around my waist and wrapped it around my shoulders. Then I put it on properly, pushing my arms through the sleeves, gently tucking the cuff around my fresh puncture, cold now with the hanging damp in the air.
The mist drew closer, until I could barely see a few feet ahead of me. I worried about passing cars. There was no way they’d be able to see me in time in this weather.
Would that be so bad? I thought. No one would know. The driver would think you were a deer. You’d barely have time to realise what had happened. One sharp shock and it would be over.
I shook my head as if I could dislodge the thought out of me.
It wasn’t the first time I’d thought something like that.
Back when I was working at the office, on those days when it felt as if I were a ghost invisibly haunting that place, I’d purposefully cross the busy road outside without checking first. Just step out.
I thought at worst I’d get a few weeks off in hospital.
Maybe someone would realise something was wrong and I’d finally get help.
At best…
I tasted the tears before I knew they were rolling.
Salt and iron. I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my sleeves, pulled down over my cold hands.
The burn of the tears on my skin was overly familiar.
I’d moved here, upped my whole life, to get away from the daily crying.
And yet here I was, crying again. Maybe it wasn’t Edinburgh.
Maybe it wasn’t cities. Maybe it was me.
Maybe I wasn’t built for these times, like an animal that had failed to evolve with the rest of its species, left behind, proof of the changing environment.
It was nature. Some got the right mutations and some didn’t.
Some ducklings keep up, some get left behind.
Some kids get to be pushed on the swings, and some have to push themselves.
I was just one of the unlucky ones. That’s why I couldn’t escape it.
It was nature—my nature—and it would be with me until I died.
Maybe a quick collision on a misty road would be kinder.
A sound broke me out from my circling thoughts.
Light rhythmic crunching came from up ahead. For a moment I thought of a mouth, snapping nut brittle between its teeth, wet half-chewed pieces tumbling down a pale chin. When I saw the faint outline of a person, I realised it was footsteps.
A shiver raced involuntarily up my legs.
A shadow was walking toward me on my side of the road. The country lanes out here were narrow, so I tucked my head down and crossed to the other side to let the stranger pass.
The shadow crossed with me.
I slowed my pace. The hairs on my arms stood on end.
Making sure to watch the figure, I crossed back to my original side of the road.
The shadow moved as well, only where my steps were slow and deliberate to communicate my intention, theirs were quick and impish, as if they were playing a game.
I stopped. They stopped.
It was so quiet I could hear my heartbeat thrum in my ears. A different kind of beat than the impulsive thunder of before. This was the tremble of a hummingbird, a rabbit scrabbling against the walls of a box trap. My throat went dry despite the dampness of the air.
Maybe they were blind, I thought, or had some other kind of sensory issue. Perhaps they’d half sensed me out here and were now waiting for some confirmation before they could continue. Maybe they were a lost tourist. I wet my lips, still salty from the tears, and summoned up my friendliest tone.
“Hello there,” I said.
My voice wavered slightly, belying the cheery tone I’d attempted.
There was no reply. They must not have heard me. I kept my eyes on the shadow and got my phone out of my pocket.
“Hello?” I said again.
After a second my voice echoed back at me from the shadow through the mist.
“Hello there,” it said.
I flinched, eyes staring, feet frozen.
“Hello?” it said again.
It was my voice! I shuffled backwards and fell onto the hedge. I tried to steady myself, but pain shot through my injured hand and I dropped my phone. I looked down to see where it went, but it had fallen into the long grass under the hedge.
Fuck fuck fuck.
When I looked up, the shadow was walking towards me.
Stuck in the hedgerow and nowhere to run and no one to call, I ducked my head and clung onto the brittle branches behind me.
As the figure approached, their face came into detail.
Bright, unblinking eyes, outline of beautiful, bouncing hair, that wide, tooth-filled smile.
I recognised her before I saw the crescent scar on her forehead.
My neighbour was walking toward me in the mist of this lonely, quiet road.
I avoided her eyes. Something deep in me told me not to look in her eyes.
I watched as her feet stepped into my personal space.
“Where are you going, neighbour?” she asked.
I said nothing and shrank back into my shaking shoulders.
Those feet stayed stood in my space.
I kept my eyes on the ground. She was so close, I could feel her breath on my forehead.
Don’t look up don’t look up don’t look up.
After a few agonizing seconds, she backed up and laughed, gentle as if I’d just told her an amusing story. My shoulders relaxed away from my ears.
Before I could stop myself, my eyes flickered up.
Her head was twisting back to keep facing me as she walked away. The wrinkling in her neck was red with torsion.
But it was her face close up that frightened me most.
I ducked my eyes back to the road.
I’d seen too much! She knew! She must know!
She kept walking. And laughing. I waited until she had disappeared into the fog on the way to the village, then I pulled myself out of the hedge and ran. I just left my phone. I didn’t care about it. There was no way I was turning my back on her unless that was to run.
Up close in the fog, I now understood Viv’s confusion.
I swear I’ve seen your sister. You look uncannily like—
The eyes, the nose, the mouth—even pulled wide. Now I knew what had bothered me so much about her face, why she was so familiar.
I realised I’d never had a proper look at her until now. Hidden in the dark at her front door. Spied through the crowd at The Curtyard. Painted and coiffed until she looked like someone new.
I’d read somewhere that none of us really know what we look like because we only ever see ourselves mirrored.
Even our phone cameras present us with a mirror image because that’s what we’re used to.
If anyone ever saw a double of themselves, they wouldn’t immediately know it because everything would be—to them—inverted.
I knew now why Viv had wondered if my neighbour and I were related. Because under the make-up, the hair style and the brighter, more confident expression, my neighbour looked just like me.
She was my perfect double.