Chapter Three Evie’s Studio
Chapter Three
Evie’s Studio
Evie had woken up early again and was finishing her painting of the view from her light-filled studio in her cottage overlooking Scapa Flow. She needed to distract herself from the strange email she’d received from Amelia McLean a few days ago.
Evie sighed in frustration. She still hadn’t decided what she was going to do.
She kept thinking about this poor woman so far away in America, checking her emails and eagerly waiting for her reply.
Evie felt terribly guilty, but she wasn’t even sure how, or even if, she was going to answer. She’d begun tentatively drafting replies, but none of them felt right. Maybe she should pretend she’d never got the email in the first place.
Today the wind rattled the windowpanes, and the sea was so rough she suspected Freya would be in touch soon cancelling their wild water swim.
They were both part of a group known as the Selkies after the mythical Orcadian sea creatures that were half-woman, half-seal.
The Selkies plunged into the water every Saturday morning almost without fail.
She loved this view from her window. The ever-changing sky and sea meant she never grew tired of looking out at the same horizon and the tourists couldn’t get enough of her paintings of sun-kissed green fields and sparkling waves.
They declared they could almost smell the salt in the air and feel the wind on their faces.
Back home, they hung up her work in their living rooms and remembered holidays filled with sunlight and rain.
Although they sold less, Evie preferred to paint the same view in winter when the waves crashed ominously on the grey shore and the sky was a hundred different shades of purplish black. Perhaps people could sense the sorrow and longing in every one of her brush strokes.
Evie found creating these paintings often reduced her to tears as it made her remember back long ago to when her first love, Brodie, had drowned in those very same waters. It was his death that had caused her to flee the island.
He was her first and only real love. Evie had just turned eighteen and Brodie, the son of an old family friend, was nineteen. She could barely recall those feelings of nerve-jangling joy at the sight of him, and the long summer nights talking and then kissing for hours.
Walking home together with bruised lips and a tingling inside that led to them eventually making hesitant, fumbling love.
It was nothing like the movies, but raw and real and full of meaning.
They had such a short time together before a chain of events unfolded that led to tragedy, unleashing her sister Liv’s terrible jealousy.
After she ran away to London, Evie has been plagued by nightmares of Brodie diving into the freezing sea.
She’d wake up shaking, sweating and heaving with sobs for hours on end, wishing she could turn the clock back.
She lived a drab and unhappy life, trapped in a toxic relationship she only managed to escape when she returned to Orkney.
Six months ago, around the anniversary of his death, Freya had gently asked her if it wasn’t too sore to be looking out on that view every day, even though the tragedy had been over twenty years before.
Evie told her that she’d made her peace with the past and that now she could remember Brodie with fondness, although tinged with regret and grief.
Evie put down her brush, narrowed her eyes and gave her painting a long, hard stare, looking for flaws and ways to improve her work.
She needed more subtle tones of grey in the sea and more of a threat of a dark storm to come.
She went into the kitchen to make herself yet another pot of coffee, and noticed she had a text from Sophia, the only real friend she had made during those years of exile in London.
I’m coming to Orkney this weekend. I had yet another row with Finn but we’ve patched things up over a long phone sex session, so things are back on track. See you soon!
Evie laughed out loud, her mood instantly lifting. This was typical Sophia. She’d met Finn, a handsome Irishman who worked for the RSPB in Orkney when she had visited Evie.
Sophia had not just fallen in love with the beautiful islands, but also with Finn, a scruffy outdoorsy charmer.
On paper he was hardly Sophia’s type. She normally went for a metrosexual, groomed, cologne-scented professional man with a flashy job and a healthy bank balance. All of the things Finn was mostly definitely not.
Evie was extremely fond of Finn, but not at all convinced this long-distance relationship could work.
Sophia would never be able to leave her busy life in London and settle in Orkney, even if – as she gleefully reported to Evie – sex over the phone with Finn was better than most couples enjoyed in bed.
Finn desperately wanted her to move up north to be with him, and his dream was for them to live in a cottage in Rackwick Bay on the island of Hoy where he monitored Sea Eagles.
It sounded idyllic, but Sophia was clear-eyed enough to realise she would eventually become bored and resentful and miss her life in London.
So, they had limped along for the past year and a half, with Sophia spending long weekends in Orkney, often arriving exhausted and fractious after delays with the London flights.
The two of them circled each other warily for a couple of days, only really settling into a routine when it was almost time for Sophia to return.
Finn had looked so appalled when she asked if he would come down to London for a change one weekend that she didn’t bring it up again.
She had poured her heart out to Evie on her last visit and told her that she couldn’t go on like this much longer.
Evie was careful not to try to sway Sophia one way or the other, but it was hard when she had never regretted her decision to come back home, even in mid-winter when the fierce gales threatened to blow you over, and the persistent freezing rain worked its way past the nape of your neck, trickling down your back and then into every crevice.
Sometimes Evie wished she could experience the high drama of Sophia and Finn’s intense relationship. She missed that tingling feeling of falling in love. Evie only ever had that with Brodie and after he died, she had never felt she deserved to be loved and shut down her feelings.
Admittedly, she had felt a spark with the shy and ridiculously handsome craftsman, Ross, who made beautiful Orkney chairs, but she wasn’t ready to find out if he felt the same.
The scars of her past were too raw. On the rare occasion they were in the same room together, both were acutely aware there was electricity between them but neither knew how to make the first move.
Evie’s phone screen lit up again, but this time it was Freya.
Far too rough out there today. Tea and cakes at mine in half an hour, don’t be late. X
Evie smiled. As much as she enjoyed the wild water swimming with the Selkies, she also loved these stormy mornings when the women didn’t swim, and instead sat in front of a roaring fire, lounging on Freya’s comfy sofas with hand-knitted blankets over their knees.
She would look across the room at Freya, whose round, almost wrinkle-free face shone with happiness at having her house filled with her friends and think how lucky she was to be a part of it all.
She quickly texted Sophia and Freya back, cleaned her brushes, whipped off her painted stained apron and headed out into the storm from the quiet of her studio.
Every time she stepped outside in Orkney it took her breath away – but particularly on a day like today.
There really wasn’t a place more beautiful on earth.
And yet she was denying the healing power of Orkney to Amelia McLean.
She knew she would have no peace of mind until she answered her email, but the longer she left it, the more difficult it would be to write a reply.
Evie was torn. Although she wanted to help this stranger, their shared family history was dark and complicated. Evie thought it would be safer to leave well alone, but she was still riddled with guilt and doubts.