‘Where are you, Rebecca?’
She considered keeping the lie going but decided against it. Time to rip that plaster off. ‘Stoirm.’
‘The island?’
‘You know another place called Stoirm?’
As usual, when speaking to him, her words came out sharper than she’d intended. She wasn’t in the least bit sorry. He’d caught her out in her lies and she was pissed off, not just at him.
‘What are you doing there?’
‘A story.’
‘Does Barry know? I mean, he told me you were ill . . .’
Of course, Simon and Barry were pals, something with which she was never completely comfortable. She often wondered if they talked about her, if Simon shared intimate details with his best bud. Guys did that, didn’t they? She knew girls did. She often wondered if Barry knew what had happened six months before . . .
‘No, he told me not to come. But this is too big to miss. And I don’t want him to know yet, either, Simon, so please keep it to yourself.’
‘He won’t hear it from me.’
Better not, she thought, and immediately regretted it. She knew Simon well, was certain he wouldn’t say anything, but it was best not to get on his wrong side, just in case. She forced her voice to soften. ‘Thanks, Simon, I appreciate it. This is important to me.’
Donnie reappeared in the doorway with another G&T for her, a fresh beer for himself. Behind him, she saw Sawyer’s eyes were on them both.
‘Simon, I need to go.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘I don’t know.’ She gave Donnie a slight smile as he placed her glass on the table and sat down again. ‘Couple of days, maybe.’
‘You want me to come over? We could make a wee holiday of it . . .’
‘No, I’m working, Simon. I have to concentrate on it.’
‘I could help . . .’
Donnie was staring at the tabletop. He was trying to appear as if he wasn’t listening but he couldn’t help but hear and that made her feel awkward.
‘Simon, I have to go. I’ll speak to you tomorrow, okay?’
‘Okay.’ He was disappointed. ‘I lo—’
She cut him off before she heard the words. She didn’t need that right now.
As she dropped the phone in her bag, Donnie asked, ‘Boyfriend trouble?’
‘Ex-boyfriend trouble,’ she said, an embarrassed laugh rippling her throat.
He smiled. ‘Relationships,’ he said. ‘Never easy.’
‘No,’ she said, wondering if he was thinking about Mhairi. ‘So, tell me about that night.’
He took a deep gulp of his beer, set the glass down again, stared at it. She didn’t know if he was gathering his thoughts or reconsidering his decision to talk to her. The music had changed again. The girl was back to plaintive mode, her voice sweet and solemn. No guitar this time, just the fiddle, its notes conjuring up feelings of loss. Finally, he took a deep breath and exhaled, long and slow. Then he spoke. ‘As I said, I was wasted back then, out of my head on drugs.’
‘What were you using?’
‘Like other kids on the island I smoked a bit of weed, but when I went to Glasgow I discovered the hard stuff.’
‘Why did you go to Glasgow?’
‘Looking for work. Ray and me, we thought the world was our oyster, you know? It was all out there waiting for us. God knows there was nothing here. My dad wanted me to work on his boat with him but that wasn’t for me. Ray’s dad wanted him to work with him in the village store—did you know they owned the wee shop in the Square?’
She nodded. She wasn’t looking forward to calling in there to speak to Mhairi’s parents.
‘We didn’t find any real work, some casual stuff, labouring and the like, but we did find heroin. That was easy enough. I was never one for needles, so I was smoking at first, then I turned to snorting. But that didn’t bring the high fast enough, so I overcame my squeamishness and began to inject. I was with Mhairi’s brother when he OD’d. That’s what made me come home. I remember watching the paramedics trying to revive him and thinking that it could’ve been me. Something clicked in my brain, right there, as I watched them give up, watched them shake their heads at each other. I told myself I’d had enough. That the shit wasn’t going to take me the way it took Ray. I thought I could beat it, you know? I thought I was more powerful.’
‘But you weren’t?’
His laugh was rueful. ‘No. Addicts often think they’re in charge but they’re not. But I thought coming back to the island, away from the temptations of the big city, maybe I’d have a chance to kick it.’
‘But you didn’t.’
He shook his head, sipped his beer. ‘There was a bloke around here by then, name of MacDonald. He’d come over from Inverness and was doing a wee bit of dealing. Nothing major, just a bit of weed and coke. But he had some heroin too.’ He smiled, but he hadn’t said anything funny. ‘If there’s one thing an addict can do, it’s find a supplier, and I honed in on him like flies to shit. All thoughts of kicking it went out the window.’
‘You could’ve got help.’
‘I could’ve, but I didn’t. I’m a Stoirm islander, you know? There’s things we don’t do. We don’t turn on family. We don’t ask outsiders for help.’
‘What about Mhairi? Did you get back together?’
There was sadness in the way his shoulder slumped. ‘No. She was carrying the kid when I left the island. I was gone eighteen months—that’s how long it took me to screw up my life completely—and she’d moved in with Roddie. I moved back in with my father, Lachlan. He was still fishing, scratching a living out of it because he was the best sailor on the island. There wasn’t anything he didn’t know about the waters around Stoirm.’ Donnie’s eyes turned soft again as he thought of his father. ‘He stood by me through it all. Defended me. Supported me. Family is everything, we stand by each other. It’s an island thing.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s gone, seven years now.’
The words came automatically. ‘I’m sorry.’
He acknowledged her with a slight inclination of his head. ‘Dropped of a massive brain aneurism. He was only fifty-five, still a young man really, but he just collapsed down at the harbour. Gone before he hit the ground, they said. Ticking time bomb, these things, but I can’t help but feel that I contributed to it.’
‘And your mother?’
‘She walked out when I was ten. She was from Thurso originally and never took to island life. Maybe that’s where I got my restless spirit from. Dad was an islander through and through, and couldn’t face living anywhere else, so they separated, eventually divorced. I still see her now and again, when I go over the water, but she never comes here. Not even for his funeral. To be honest, I don’t feel any connection to her. It was always my dad, because he was always there for me. Always. It was a shock to lose him like that.’
‘We all think our fathers are invincible,’ she said.
Donnie looked at her, sensing some common ground. ‘Your dad still around?’
She shook her head. ‘Cancer,’ she said. ‘He was an islander, too.’
That surprised him. ‘A Stoirm islander?’
‘Left when he was a teenager. John Connolly.’
He tried to place the name but came up with nothing. ‘Sorry, didn’t know him.’
‘Do you know of anyone called Connolly on the island?’
‘No, but we don’t all know one another intimately. We’re close but not all related, despite what mainlanders think.’
Donnie fell silent, perhaps thinking about his father. Rebecca considered her dad. He was an islander, always there for her too, but so was her mother. Her childhood had been happy and free of trauma. Of course, when she’d entered her teenage years there was drama, but that was of her own making, not to mention her hormones. But overall there was a Disneyesque quality to the Connolly home. Until her father died, of course. There was nothing Disney about that. He fought
it, the cancer, but it was too strong even for him. She had once thought him invincible, thought he could take anything on and best it. But she’d watched him waste away, his strong body being eaten by a pernicious, unfeeling disease.
She brought her mind back to the present. ‘Can you tell me about the night Mhairi died?’
Donnie reached for his drink again and took a hefty mouthful. Then he began talking.
17
Donnie Kerr
Fifteen years earlier
I was climbing the walls. I hadn’t had a hit all day and MacDonald had cut me off. My dole money only went so far and no one would give me work. I couldn’t be trusted. My father had urged me to work with him on the fishing boat, but I thought it was just a way to keep an eye on me because there was no way I had the strength to handle the nets and old Lachlan knew that. There was no denying the sea was in my blood. It was one of the reasons I’d come back from Glasgow. I needed to be near the salt water. I needed to feel the breeze from the open ocean on my face. But there was more in my blood than the sea by then. Insects, crawling over each other as they poured through my veins to reach my brain. They were itchy little buggers and the only thing that would soothe them was a hit, just one more, just a wee taste to get sorted and then I could start getting my life together. Just one more hit and then I could fix everything, mend those fences, repair those bridges. Make my dad proud. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
I’d tried to stay in my room, but the itch was too much. I’d smoked the cigarettes I’d lifted from my dad’s pocket. I’d drunk as much coffee as I could, even drained what was left of the bottle of Talisker he’d had been saving for a special occasion. Aye, Dad, good luck with that, I’d thought as I necked it. None of it had worked, though. I still felt those insects crawling under my skin. That’s what it feels like, the need for heroin. Wee ants, with feathery antennae, scratch, scratch, scratching at your veins. Crawl, crawl, crawl. Itch, itch, itch. All I needed was a wee taste, just to settle things down.
I’d searched the house for money but the old man was too canny for that by then. He’d long since learned not to leave any loose cash in the house for the insects to carry away. I had no pals left to tap. Ray was gone. One hit too many. Henry wouldn’t even speak to me. Roddie—well, Roddie had stolen my girl.
Mhairi.
That’s the way I saw it. Roddie had stolen her. It didn’t matter that I’d buggered off and left her pregnant. It didn’t matter that Roddie had been there for her when I wasn’t. He’d stolen her and for that he was a bastard. Even so, I went out looking for him and Henry. They owed me something, in my mind at least. But when I found them, working on the estate—Roddie still doing whatever Henry wanted him to do—they just turned away. I was an addict. I couldn’t be trusted. I’d let them down.
A storm had hit the day before. I’d felt it coming for a week, even the heroin couldn’t dull that sense. It had raged in from the Atlantic and slammed against the island like it was trying to push it closer to the mainland, howling like the banshees they said lived on the mountain. It hadn’t blown over completely, its tail was still swishing, leaving some blustery gusts and cold sharp rain.
The weather meant nothing to me, though. All I cared about was getting the means to scratch that itch. The way I saw it, I had no choice. If I didn’t get some cash and find MacDonald, I’d be dead by morning. I knew it. The creatures coursing through my body, eating everything in sight, would consume me. As I watched Henry, Roddie and the others work I could feel the little bastards hollowing me out, using my veins and arteries as highways to every inch of my body so they could scratch and gnaw and dig.
And then the solution presented itself when Mhairi appeared.
I knew she blamed me for Ray’s death. But on another level I knew she’d help me out. She’d give me something. She was always good for a tenner or so. Just a wee something. She couldn’t say no, could she? We had a bond, a connection that even Roddie couldn’t break. She’d had my little one, for God’s sake. That meant something, surely?
Mhairi.
She was my best bet. She wouldn’t see me suffer. I convinced myself of that. She had exchanged a few words with Henry and was standing alone, off to the side, watching the men work, when I approached her.
‘What are you doing here, Donnie?’ she asked, her voice, even raised against the wind, dull and weary.
‘Mhairi, darling, I need money . . .’
She blew out her cheeks slightly. ‘You always need money.’
She couldn’t even look at me. She just watched Roddie.
‘No, look, I really need it. Fifty quid.’
‘Donnie . . .’
‘Twenty, even! Please, I need it.’
‘To buy drugs?’
I didn’t say anything because honesty did not come easily to me back then. The drugs do that to you. ‘Come on, Mhairi. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. You know me.’
She gave me a look, a not quite angry, not quite sad, then said, ‘I used to. I used to know you all, but now I’m not so sure.’
I didn’t pursue that. My mind was on one thing. ‘Come on, Mhairi,’ I said. ‘Just give me some cash and I’ll never ask you again. Honest.’
She thought about it. She looked so small, so beautiful. I noticed that, even in the state I was in. I always noticed that. She took one last look at the men, then said, ‘I’ve got to go and fetch Sonya from my mum and dad.’
The guys had made it perfectly clear that I wasn’t needed, so I followed her to the car. It was parked a distance away and she was already in the driver’s seat before I piled in. She slammed the car into gear and pulled away. She hadn’t made any move to give me money and I wasn’t sure if I should mention it again. We drove on in silence. I was fidgeting, I knew it, but couldn’t help myself. Mhairi didn’t say anything about it. Then, suddenly, she said my name. Just Donnie, as if she was going to say more, then thought better of it. When I looked at her I could see what I thought were tears in her eyes. But they didn’t affect me, all I could think of were my own needs. The drugs do that to you, too.
‘So, Mhairi . . .’ I said. ‘About the money.’
‘I’m not giving you money for drugs, Donnie. You know that.’
‘It’s not for drugs,’ I said, but her eye roll told me she knew I was lying. After all, I was speaking. She exhaled, shook her head as if she was trying to clear it.
‘Liars,’ she said, quietly. So quietly I barely caught it. ‘You’re all liars. Every one of you.’
And when she began to cry, very gently, I found that the insects hadn’t taken hold of every part of me. There was still something of the old Donnie there and I reached out and laid my hand on her knuckles where they gripped the steering wheel so very tightly. The addict was only interested in calming the insects, but Donnie—the old Donnie, the Donnie that rubbed that hand—asked, ‘What’s up, love?’
Her head shook again and she couldn’t speak at first. She brought the car to a stop and her free hand wiped the tears from her face. ‘I think I’m in trouble, Donnie,’ she said.
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Big trouble. And I don’t know what to do.’
‘Tell me, maybe I can help?’
She looked at me, her eyes searching for something in me, I don’t know what. Perhaps she was looking for that old Donnie, the one she’d played with as a child, the one she’d grown up with, the one she’d loved. I wanted to tell her that the old Donnie was still here and he wanted to help, but that damned scratching was too strong and I couldn’t find the words. She was trying hard to find something in my face, I could see that, but in the end too much had happened—I’d left her alone carrying Sonya, the drugs, being with Ray when he’d died, watching him die, being complicit in that. She had no faith in me and I couldn’t blame her, even the addict couldn’t blame her. The truth was, by that time the insects were on the march again and I was focused more on how to get some money out of her.
She sai
d nothing more, merely started the car again and we drove in silence all the way back to Portnaseil. She stopped at the edge of the Square, just out of sight of the windows of her parents’ home above the store.
‘You’d better go, Donnie. I don’t want my dad to see us together.’
I still hadn’t got what I wanted, what I needed, and she knew it. ‘Mhairi . . .’
She pulled her handbag from the back seat, rummaged inside and came up with two ten-pound notes. ‘Take it.’
I took it. Stared at it. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’
‘It’s all I’m giving you and I shouldn’t be doing that. Just go, Donnie. Go and do whatever it is you have to do.’
I climbed out of the car, the money clenched tightly to prevent it from running away. I wanted to get into the hotel bar, see if MacDonald was there, see what I could get for twenty. I knew it would be enough, but it was getting late and MacDonald might’ve left, he might be anywhere. I would have to find him. But at the same time the old part of me rose once again to the surface. I could feel the money burning in my hands, could feel the insects scratch, scratch, scratching at my brain, but I leaned back in. ‘Mhairi, you know if you need anything I’m there for you.’
Both hands were on the steering wheel and she was leaning forward over it. She gave a little sardonic laugh. ‘Donnie,’ she said, ‘there’s a first time for everything.’
She started to move before I’d closed the door. I watched the car turn into the Square, then looked at the money in my hand. The twenty quid. And all thought of Mhairi was gone. All that mattered now was MacDonald. All that mattered now was calming those little insects. All that mattered now was me.
I didn’t know that’d be the last time I’d ever see her.
18
The present day
Rebecca scrolled through the text document as she sat at the table in the hotel restaurant. She’d transcribed Donnie’s quotes the night before as she lay in bed, some foreign film on Channel 4 buzzing in the background. She liked noise while she worked and something with subtitles meant she wouldn’t be distracted. She’d also archived the recording on her external hard drive and backed everything up on thumb drive because she lived in mortal fear of computer meltdown. Now, as she waited for someone to take her breakfast order, she read it again, this time on her tablet, which she used as yet another back-up.
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