Ruby #3
A figure is crossing the causeway, picking its way across to the island in the bay.
It appears to be an elderly woman, her hair as white as the tufts of sheep’s wool caught along the line of the barbed-wire fence.
She’s wearing a pair of Wellington boots and a man’s tweed overcoat, with what looks like a white cotton nightie underneath.
She hurries a little unsteadily over the rocks—which must surely be slippery with seaweed in the ebbing tide—and clambers up the far side onto the grassy knoll.
I crane my head to see where she goes, but she disappears behind the stone circle.
I sigh deeply. This must be my new charge, and she appears to be slightly mad, hopping about the shore at midnight in her nightwear.
There had been no mention of dementia during my interview.
In fact, I’m pretty sure her son told me his mother was as sharp as a tack.
I go to stand in the door of the byre, waiting for her to reappear.
My duties don’t officially begin until tomorrow morning (though a glance at my watch tells me it nearly is tomorrow morning now), but I can’t let an eighty-something-year-old woman go gallivanting about on the edge of the Atlantic, risking getting stranded overnight when the tide turns.
I glance toward Jamie’s cottage, hoping he’ll appear and take charge of the situation, but the curtains are firmly closed, and the lights are off.
Presumably he’s tucked up in his bed, fast asleep, as we all ought to be.
Darkness is falling properly now, so I grab a flashlight from a shelf beside the door and decide to take a stroll down to the beach.
It can’t hurt, and if I see Mrs. Williamson coming back, I’ll stay out of her way and keep an eye on her from a distance, just until she’s safely back in her house.
When I reach the edge of the pebble beach, I turn off my flashlight and perch on a hummock of grass, off to one side where I’ll be invisible.
I’m just beginning to wonder whether I should go over to the island myself and see if she’s okay when a glimmer of light appears, wavering along the curve of the stone circle.
I breathe a sigh of relief. It appears she has a flashlight of her own and is on her way back, well before the tide cuts off the island again.
I watch as she picks her way down the grassy slope on the far side and onto the causeway.
But my relief is premature. As she steps across the wet rocks, meandering between mounds of seaweed, the beam of the flashlight describes a wild arc in the air, illuminating a flash of white hair as she loses her balance on the treacherous rocks, flailing her arms and falling heavily.
I gasp and jump to my feet, fumbling to switch on my own flashlight as I run across the beach and onto the stones where she lies.
I shine my light over her cautiously, the beam revealing a muddle of damp tweed and a white cotton hem adrift in a rockpool.
Then I find myself looking into the frightened, furious eyes of a tiny old lady.
Her face is creased with pain and waxy with cold, her hair a tangle of thistledown against a cushion of black seaweed.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to give you a scare. Are you all right? That was quite a tumble.” I don’t feel the need to bother with the niceties of introducing myself, aware that she’ll know exactly who I am.
“So, you’re already spying on me, are you? Ready to report back to my children?” she hisses. “I’m fine, just leave me alone.”
But, as she attempts to sit up, I can see she’s hurt herself. She flinches as she tries to press a hand against the rocks and right herself, giving a little involuntary cry of pain.
“Here,” I say, “let me take a look.” I direct the beam of my flashlight toward her arm.
The sleeve of her coat has ridden up, exposing a thin forearm, her wrist as fragile as the bones of a bird.
I can see it’s already swelling and must be sprained at the very least, if not broken.
There’s something else, too…I bend my head to take a closer look.
“No!” she cries, and her tone makes me freeze. She pulls the sleeve down, wincing again as she does so.
“All right,” I say, deliberately keeping my voice low and calm, the way you would to try to soothe a wounded animal. “Let’s use my jumper to make a sling and support that arm. Then we’ll get you back to your house.”
As I help her to her feet, she’s shaking from the combination of shock and the chill of the damp night air. She allows me to support her, and we make our way slowly up the road to the farmhouse.
I push open the front door, to be met by the inquiring snout of a sheepdog.
Fortunately, he decides I’m no threat and wags his tail in a friendly manner before retreating to his bed beside the kitchen stove.
I untie my jumper, which has been supporting Hanna’s injured arm, and help her gingerly remove her coat.
She’s still shivering with shock but makes her way determinedly upstairs to her bedroom while I busy myself putting the kettle on to boil, finding a hot-water bottle and a packet of paracetamol, the sheepdog watching as I open and close cupboard doors.
The kitchen is adorned with an astonishing collection of artifacts that clutter every available surface.
On closer inspection, they appear to be the gleanings of a dedicated beachcomber.
The windowsill is decorated with an assortment of misted sea glass, a crab’s shell scoured clean by the sea, and the skull of a bird, the beak curving to a point.
A line of carefully arranged shells runs along the upper edge of the sash.
A dresser holds an array of old earthenware bottles—one containing a posy of gull feathers—flanked by a pair of colored fishing floats, and a sheep’s skull, complete with curling horns, peers down from the top shelf alongside a weathered wooden nameplate from a boat, bearing the inscription Ocean Spirit.
The overall effect is of glorious chaos.
I just hope my duties here aren’t going to include the dusting.
By the time I’m upstairs, Hanna’s crawled beneath the bedcovers and pulled them up to her chin.
Her frightened eyes follow my movements as I gently place the hot-water bottle by her feet, urging her to swallow a couple of painkillers with the glass of water I hold to her lips.
She sips, swallows, then slumps back against her pillows, her hair forming a halo around the paleness of her face.
“Feeling a bit better?” I ask.
She nods wordlessly.
“I’m still not sure we shouldn’t drive you straight to A and E, get that wrist X-rayed. It could be broken.”
“It can wait until the morning,” she snaps. “It’s probably just a sprain. A night’s rest will do it good.”
“Well, I can sleep on the sofa tonight if you like. Just in case.”
She shakes her head firmly. “Please go now, I’ll be fine.” Her accent is clipped, the vowels deliberately pronounced.
“All right. Well, your phone is here on the bedside table, see? I’ve put my number in, so just call if you need me, and I’ll come straight over. And, for the record, I’m not a spy,” I add. “I’m here to be your companion. Whether you want one or not.”
I smile warmly, and her expression of distrust, which until now has been anything but companionable, seems to thaw just a little.
“But you’re going to tell my son and daughter about this, I suppose,” she says.
“I think that can wait until we know for sure what the damage is. I’ll be back first thing in the morning, and we’ll see if you need a trip to the hospital. Then you can decide for yourself whether or not you want to come clean to Robert about your midnight escapade.”
She seems relieved. Her eyes are closing, and there’s a little more color in her cheeks, so I turn out the lamp and quietly leave the room.
I put the front door on the latch, just in case I need to get back in.
My flashlight illuminates the grassy path as I pick my way around the deposits left by the sheep on my way back to the byre.
At last, I climb into my bed, at the end of a day so long it’s felt like a week. I’m exhausted, but I don’t fall asleep straightaway. An image is engraved on my mind, making me toss and turn a while longer.
I know I wasn’t imagining it. I saw it before she wrenched down the cuff of her coat to cover it again. I struggle to make sense of it…. It can’t be what I think it is, can it? But what other reason could there possibly be?
I see it again, my flashlight beam illuminating her thin white arm, stark against the black shine of the rocks. Etched into the skin there, among the blue lines of her veins, was a crudely tattooed line of numbers. Numbers that could mean only one thing.