Chapter 7
SEVEN
‘I can’t actually believe you’re back. Gahh.
I can’t stop hugging you. I won’t stop.’ Heather Balhennie’s voice was barely audible from where her face was smushed into her sister’s shoulder.
‘We thought you’d gone forever. It was horrible, Sorrel.
It was like there was a piece of the puzzle missing and it was never going to be the same. ’
‘You have to stop eventually, you know,’ Sorrel replied, quietly. ‘Hugging, that is.’
Heather had always been the most affectionate one. She was a crier, a hugger, the Balhennie sister who was always the first to share her feelings.
Heather couldn’t live if she didn’t feel. Sorrel, who had sometimes struggled to be in touch with her feelings, had always loved her sister’s openness. ‘We’re on a walk. I can’t walk with you hugging me.’
‘You can. I’ll hang around your neck like a baby monkey. You can just carry me around.’ Heather pouted, but released her arms. ‘The thing is, I don’t want to let you go. If I let you go, you might run away again. I’ve never been very good with separation.’
‘I know. You had that stuffed donkey you cuddled every night, since you were two.’
‘Eeyore. I still have him.’ Heather nodded.
‘Heather. He must be rank by now.’ Sorrel let out an involuntary laugh.
‘He’s been washed. I’m not a monster.’
Sorrel had missed all of her family, in every day of the ten years she’d lived another life.
For every day of those ten years, she had wanted her sisters and her parents and her home.
She’d missed the very bricks and stone of the Inn.
The smell of it. The heft of the place; its wide, ornate wooden staircases that dated back hundreds of years.
Its thick royal blue carpets. Catriona’s vintage bone china collection, proudly displayed on a Welsh dresser in the dining room.
Sorrel had missed her room. She’d missed lounging on her bed with Heather or Violet or Bluebell or one of her other sisters, drinking hot chocolate, gossiping or watching a movie.
She’d missed the bustling kitchen, stripping beds, making breakfasts, helping out the Inn’s customers with directions and car hire and helping Catriona manage the Inn’s online booking system that never quite worked properly.
And Sorrel had missed the land of Skye itself; the rocky waterfalls, the long, empty roads, the green and orange and purple moors that stretched for miles.
All the time she’d been away, she’d thought she’d been happy.
But all it had taken was one day back on the island for her to smell the comforting tang of the earth and feel the crisp breeze on her skin, and she knew.
She knew she’d only been half a person in London.
But all of it – the land, the sky, the smell of the place– they had been tainted in her memory; tainted by the secret she couldn’t forget.
‘I’m sorry. I know you’re not a monster.’ Sorrel squeezed her sister back.
Her other sister, Bluebell, stood slightly apart from them both, looking shy. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet for the whole of the walk so far.
‘Blue… are you okay?’ Sorrel reached out to her sister, but Bluebell stayed apart.
‘It’s been a long time,’ her sister said. ‘I… I’m just having trouble adjusting.’
‘I know. It must be weird.’ Sorrel put her outstretched hand in her pocket.
Randomly, she wished she’d brought something to eat with her: a treat of some kind that she could give her sister, like you’d give an apple to a skittish horse.
They stopped as the castle came into view through a clearing in the ancient oaks and yews they had been walking alongside.
Sorrel had always loved this part of the ancient woodland; much of Skye was moorland, where the wind made it difficult for trees to grow.
Yet here at the edge of the loch and around the castle, there was woodland, no doubt planted by the lairds of long ago.
Bluebell looked out over the loch, where they stood. ‘Remember when we used to take a boat out to Dun Fiadhairt? I haven’t done that in ages. Not since…’ she broke off.
Not since you left. Her youngest sister’s unsaid words hung in the air.
Sorrel rested her palm on the yew next to her and looked down on the blue-green expanse of Loch Balhennie below.
To her right stood the castle, overlooking the loch, and in the distance she could see the small island of Dun Fiadhairt, where there was an Iron Age broch, or fort.
You could get there by boat, but it was a clamber over boggy moorland to get to the broch itself.
Still, once you were there, you could still stand in it with the walls around you and imagine, if only for a short while, that it was a distant time in history and not the twenty-first century with its memes and burnout and men who apparently thought they were entitled to as many women as they could grasp.
She was furious about Simon; furious about what he’d thrown away with his thoughtless betrayal.
Perhaps it hadn’t been thoughtless. Perhaps he’d done exactly what he intended to do.
That thought made her feel worse. But this wasn’t the moment to be thinking about Simon.
Sorrel held her hand out to Bluebell.
‘I remember.’
Skye was in Sorrel’s bones, and she was glad to be home, even though the reasons she was there were difficult.
Coming home was remembering, and many of the things she’d deliberately forgotten were beautiful, like this view, the trees, the waterfalls, the clean air and the ancient brochs. Many of them made her heart sing.
But there were also things that Sorrel wanted to forget. She wanted to forget what Simon had done to her. She wanted to forget the years of pretending to be someone that she wasn’t.
‘Why did you go?’ Bluebell asked. ‘And… why are you back? We know that something happened with Mum. She’s been like a cat on bricks since you got back.
I mean, I know she hates living in the caravan, so it might be that.
But… we all feel sort of weird, now you’re back, Sorrel.
We love you. We’re so glad you’re home. But…
we’ve never understood why you left in the first place.
There was no warning. It… it hurt.’ Her voice wobbled.
Sorrel’s heart went out to her. She had absolutely never wanted to hurt Bluebell, or any of them.
‘We’re here if you want to talk about it,’ Heather added. ‘We’re sisters. We’re made of the same stuff. Literally. We’re just slightly varied versions of the same DNA. We shouldn’t have secrets. It makes me sad to think that we do.’ Her voice hitched.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ Sorrel just felt like she was repeating herself. ‘I… I will tell you. But I’m not ready. Not yet. Can you give me some time?’ she asked, looking away from both of them at the view across the loch. Bluebell was right: there were so many memories there.
Sorrel had loved those boat trips. When they were younger, with Angus at the oars, and when she was old enough, she had rowed her sisters across.
She had been the one who had taken Bluebell there for the first time.
She remembered her little sister’s expression of delighted surprise as they’d cut through the cold, clear water of the loch.
It had been a summer’s day, and the sun had lit everything up so beautifully.
It was one of those perfect moments that were forever ingrained in her memory.
Bluebell looking out at the loch and then at her, asking, Are there monsters in the loch, Sorrel?
And she’d offhandedly reassured her sister, No, of course not.
Only fish, because she was concentrating on her rowing.
But Bluebell’s little face had creased with disappointment, and Sorrel had realised that she had wanted her big sister to say, Yes, there are monsters.
Watch out. Bluebell had wanted to believe that magic was real.
As soon as she’d realised that, Sorrel had leaned forward, the rough wooden oars in her hands, and whispered in Bluebell’s ear, But who knows what’s in the depth of the loch, Blue?
There could be all kinds down there. Sea serpents.
Ancient dinosaurs. Mermaids. Kelpies. And Bluebell’s eyes had lit up with the power of her own imagination.
Oh. Yes.
You should draw all the magical creatures of the loch in your book when we get home, Sorrel had said to Bluebell. And I’ll write the story. Or you can.
Okay. Sorrel remembered how well she could see her little sister’s resolve to draw and write the best magical story she could. And she had, when they’d got home.
Sorrel had always told the younger ones stories that she would make up.
She had loved being their storyteller; the one who had created a vivid world of shared imagination for them to live inside.
She had invented so many little stories featuring recurring places and characters: the Palace Under the Loch, ruled over by the kind-hearted Salmon King; the Gnomes of the Broch, with their plaited beards and seven rules for the good stewardship of the glen; the Kelpie Races, a race for the mythical Scottish water horses that took place every year starting at the waterfall at Kilt Rock.
Eventually, her sisters had started referencing those events and characters and places as real.
But there was another reason for her stories, and that was to distract her sisters from her mother’s frequent absences.
It wasn’t unusual for Catriona not to come along on a day out, or for her to retire to her bedroom because it was too noisy, the children were too much, she needed some time alone.
And on the times when Sorrel had tiptoed up to her parents’ bedroom and peeked in, she’d seen Catriona as just a lump in her bed with the covers pulled over her head. She’d never told her sisters.
‘Yes. But you’re going to have to talk to us eventually, you know,’ Heather said. She put her hands on her hips and stared out to the loch. ‘You know what? I’m hungry. Let’s go to the castle café and get something.’
Bluebell lit up. ‘Oooh. Yeah. A sausage sandwich.’
‘Okay.’ Sorrel grinned at her sisters. ‘Thank you for being patient. I appreciate it.’
‘We appreciate you.’ Heather hugged her; Bluebell still stood apart a little. She was going to take longer to let Sorrel in again.
And that’s okay, Sorrel thought, resignedly. She and Bluebell had been close. It was all right that it was going to take her sister a while to forgive her.
Sorrel fervently wished that she could forget the way she had left Skye and only remember the good times.
It hurt to think that she had hurt her sisters, but she didn’t know if she had it in her to tell them the truth without hurting them again.
Her secret weighed all the more heavily on her now that she was with her sisters again; she wanted to tell them. But she had no idea how.