by Emma Fraser
She trudged beside him over a stile and onto a narrow track. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I’m a freelance photographer.’
She was surprised. She’d assumed he was a fisherman. She waited for him to elaborate but it seemed that was all he intended to say on the subject. This was going to be a fun outing if he used words as if they were riches too precious to squander.
‘How about you?’ he asked.
‘I work for a publishing house.’
‘A writer?’
‘A copy editor.’
‘But you’d like to write?’ How did he know that? Then again, most people assumed that people who worked within the industry were closet writers.
‘I’ve thought about it,’ she admitted reluctantly, ‘but I don’t have the talent.’
‘How do you know? Have you tried?’
On second thoughts, she preferred it when he wasn’t talking.
‘Perhaps one day when I’m not relying on a job to make a crust…’
He slid her a sideways look and raised an eyebrow.
‘My mother is an artist – like your dad,’ she said, changing the subject.
‘I hope she’s sold more of her paintings than he did.’
‘She’s pretty well known.’ Sarah narrowly avoided a pile of sheep droppings. ‘But she had a stroke a few weeks ago. I doubt she’ll paint again.’
‘Bummer.’
She was glad that he didn’t offer her empty platitudes. However, the look he gave her from his shockingly blue eyes was filled with sympathy.
‘So what kinds of photos do you take?’
‘I’m a photo-journalist. I take photographs wherever there’s a story.’
‘Will I have seen your work?’
‘Possibly. I was with The Times until they were taken over by Murdoch. I went freelance after that. I’ve had my work published in Life magazine, National Geographic, Sunday supplements – places like that.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Most places. Most recently the Congo.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous there?’
‘Not if you know what you’re doing.’
Immediately in front of them was a spread of bracken.
‘Make sure your jeans are tucked into your socks,’ Neil told her. ‘Ticks.’
‘Your grandmother said you’re visiting. You don’t live in Skye, then? I mean, when you’re not working?’
His gaze wandered over the hills and to the islands, partly hidden by mist, across the sea.
‘I live in London mostly. More practical work-wise when I travel so much. Friends put me up when I need a place to doss – one or two let me use their cupboards as dark rooms when I need to develop my photos – but I come back here whenever I can.’
‘And your girlfriend who doesn’t like to boil crabs alive? She doesn’t worry about you when you’re working in politically sensitive areas?’
He laughed. ‘Politically sensitive areas? Fuck-ups would be more accurate. But Jasmine-who-doesn’t-like-to-boil-crabs-alive is not my girlfriend any more. Hasn’t been for the last six months. Got pretty fed up with the amount of travelling I do. And when I wasn’t travelling, the best I could manage was a couple of months at a stretch in London. She came here with me once. It wasn’t a success. She was bored in less than a day. Said there was nothing to do.’
For some reason the knowledge he didn’t have a girlfriend sent a little shiver of unexpected delight up her spine. If Katherine was Richard’s cousin then in some way she couldn’t quite work out, Neil was too. Although he wasn’t as spectacularly good-looking as Richard, he had the same aquiline nose and high cheekbones. And a certain masculine roughness she found surprisingly sexy. Matthew was fastidious when it came to his personal grooming – he even ironed his jeans or rather, paid a laundry service to do it for him.
She realised she’d been staring and he was waiting for her to say something. ‘Well, there isn’t much to do here. Not really.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
They had reached the part of the path that ran along the cliff side. It was a sheer drop to the rocks below and Sarah kept her eyes averted.
‘Did you find out what you needed to know from my grandmother?’
‘A bit of it. But not everything. What has she told you?’
‘Very little. She’s an islander. We tend to keep confidences.’
So she found herself telling him the whole story. He listened without interrupting.
‘And the solicitors haven’t managed to contact this Magdalena?’
‘They hadn’t by the time I left Edinburgh, although it’s possible they have by now. I need to find a phone box and ring them. The phone in the house must have been disconnected when Richard died.’
‘There’s one at this end of Borreraig. We’ll pass it if we take the road back instead of the track, but I’m not sure if it’s working either. You could use the one in our house.’
They stopped to watch a yacht disappear behind a cliff.
‘You didn’t know your mother was adopted then?’ Neil asked.
‘She never told me.’
‘How old was she?’
‘About five, I think.’
‘If she was that old, won’t she remember something about her natural parents?’
‘You would think, huh? But since it wasn’t a topic she ever brought up and it’s difficult for her to communicate now, I know absolutely nothing.’ She bent down and picked a sprig of bog myrtle, inhaling its sweet scent as she rubbed the leaves between her fingers. ‘I keep thinking of Irena. What made her go back to Poland? She must have known what was going on there. I would have been petrified.’
‘We don’t always know what we’d do until we’re put to the test.’
‘I’ve a pretty good idea what I would have done. Kept my head down and if I managed to escape nothing would have induced me to go back, especially not as an agent. I’m no risk taker.’
‘Maybe her motive was patriotism? Or revenge? Love even?’
‘One of those, I’m sure. I guess I’ll never know.’
They walked through a small copse before Neil turned away from the sea and headed inland. He stopped in front of a large expanse of land dotted with the overgrown remains of what once had been walls. ‘This is Galtrigill, or what’s left of it,’ he said. He turned back towards the sea. ‘If I were to build a house on Skye, it would be right here.’
She followed his gaze to the dazzlingly blue sea, surrounded by green hills covered with pink and purple heather. It was perfectly still except for the occasional cry of a seagull, the air scented by wood smoke or peat, bog myrtle and clover. He was right – it was stunning. She could easily imagine him here, living off the land, fishing for his supper – except, of course, he wasn’t a fisherman.
He flicked her a glance. ‘Not that I’m planning to settle down any time soon.’ He hooked his hands behind his neck and stretched. ‘Still got too much to do.’
She studied him from the corner of her eye. He was everything Matthew wasn’t. Neil had no house – no permanent job and he travelled to dangerous countries. Yet he was the most intriguing man she’d ever met.
Sarah had to keep putting coins into the phone box while the secretary transferred her call to Alan Bailey. Neil sat on a rock nearby waiting for her. She was almost out of change when Bailey came on the line.
‘Ah, Miss Davidson, I was about to write to you.’
‘Does that mean you have news?’
‘We have located a lady who we believe to be Miss Drobnik. We still have to carry out a few checks, but if she is indeed the person we are looking for, I’m afraid she will inherit the houses in Edinburgh and Skye after all.’
The money from the houses would have helped, but far, far better that Magdalena had been found. It would make Mum so happy. Sarah only wished it had been her that had found Magdalena.
‘I’m delighted she’s alive,’ she said truthfully. ‘Could you give me h
er address?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. However, if you are happy for me to do so, I shall write to her with your details and let her know you would like to contact her.’
Sarah seethed with frustration, knowing nothing she could say or do would make the obnoxious Alan Bailey change his mind.
The pips were going and she was out of change. ‘Please do that. Today, if possible. I really need to speak to her.’
‘I can’t promise I’ll do it today. I have —’ and with that, the line went dead.
Sarah opened the heavy door of the booth and called across to Neil. ‘Do you have a couple of twenty pences or a fifty?’
He dug around in the pocket of his jeans and handed her two coins. ‘I could go back home and get some more, if you like?’
‘This should do. I don’t expect it will be a long call.’
She dialled Matthew’s number and was once again put on hold. As she waited to be connected to him, she drummed her fingertips on the top of the phone. Even if the solicitors wrote to Magdalena today, which was unlikely, it would be another week at the earliest before Sarah heard anything.
‘Sarah?’ Matthew said from the other end of the line.
‘Yes. I’m calling from a phone box just in case we get cut off.’
‘You’re still in Skye?’ She could hear the rustling of paper in the background as if he were reading something while talking to her. She suppressed a flash of irritation. Matthew liked to ‘multi- task’, as he called it. ‘Any news?’ he asked.
‘I’ve a lot to tell you. We need to talk.’
There was more rustling of paper. ‘Hold on a moment.’ He must have placed his hand over the receiver as everything went muffled for a while. The pips went again and she stuck another twenty into the box. ‘Sorry about that. Jane’s just reminding me I’m due at a meeting. So what have you found out?’
‘I’m just off the phone to the solicitors. They’ve located Magdalena. At least they think they have —’
‘So she’s alive. Pity.’
‘Pity?’
‘It means you won’t inherit the house in Edinburgh – or in Skye, although that doesn’t matter as much – it won’t be worth a fraction of the Edinburgh one. You could have used the money to find a home for your mother. That way you’d be free to come with me to Geneva.’
Hadn’t he been listening when she told him that this search was so much more than that?
‘Sarah, I’m going to have to put you on hold again —’ Before she could protest, she heard the piped music his company used.
Her gaze drifted to where Neil was sitting. He was staring out to sea, looking as if he had all the time in the world to wait for a woman he barely knew to finish her phone call. She followed the line of his sight, towards the sea. The wind had risen and crested waves rippled the earlier smooth surface of the water. The sky had darkened, making the landscape wilder. The scene reminded her of her mother’s paintings. Sad and angry but utterly beautiful.
A memory of the holiday in Dorset came flooding back.
It had been a success. Her mother, freed from the tyranny of her daily painting schedule, had walked with Sarah along the cliffs most mornings. They would stop for lunch in one of the tea rooms and then, in the afternoons, browse the shops or, if the weather had turned, read their books, Sarah sprawled on the sofa, her mother, more neatly, in one of the arm chairs. There had been no more wine, however, no heart-to-heart of the kind Sarah had hoped for.
She’d waited until their last evening before she summoned the courage to speak about Matthew.
‘Once I’ve graduated, he wants us to live together in London, Mum,’ she’d said eventually. Her mother had met him once and behaved with perfect politeness but Sarah had sensed she hadn’t trusted Matthew’s easy charm. Certainly there had been no suggestion of them sharing a room. Not that that had stopped Matthew from creeping into her bedroom in the middle of the night.
‘London! So far away.’
‘It’s not really. A few hours by train. I could come home at weekends, or you could come and stay with us.’
Her mother’s mouth had turned down at the corners. ‘If he loves you he’d want to marry you. Not ask you to live in sin.’
Sarah hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. ‘Everyone’s living together first these days, Mum.’
‘But not my daughter.’ She’d sat forward. ‘Once he gets what he wants, he’ll never marry you.’
‘He does love me, Mum.’
‘In that case he would want to marry you.’ Her mother took her hand, surprising Sarah. ‘You have one life, Sarah, only one; and we never know when that will be taken from us. You must make the most of it. Don’t just settle. I know I’ve not always encouraged you to spread your wings, but I was wrong. I’ve not been a very good mother, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ Although she’d longed to talk like this to her mother, this new openness, this vulnerability, made her uncomfortable.
‘You know, when you were born I was so happy. At last I had someone I could love – really love. Oh, I loved your father, at least I thought I did, but he wasn’t mine. Not the way you were.’
Sarah stayed absolutely still, not wanting her mother to stop.
‘When I held you, I thought my heart would burst right out of my chest. But then I thought, what if I lost you? What if something happened to you? From then on, all I could see were the dangers. You could get croup, I could drop you, your father could crash the car with you in it.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘So many things could hurt you. The fear of losing you took over me. I started doing little things, not stepping on cracks, all sorts of ridiculous rituals. I made a bargain with God: if he kept you safe, he could do what he liked with me.’
Sarah held her breath. Her mother had never confided in her before. She’d waited so long for this moment, now it was actually happening she felt strangely uncomfortable.
‘Your father tried his best to make me see that I was passing my fears onto you but, even though I knew it was wrong to keep you wrapped in cotton wool, I couldn’t stop myself. It was almost a relief when he left. I would never have to wonder again whether I could trust him to protect you – he was so casual with you. Flinging you into the air, refusing to get up in the night to see if you were all right.’ She smiled sadly. ‘He said having you in our room was enough, but I knew, if I didn’t watch over you, someone or something could snatch you away from me.’
‘But nothing ever happened to me.’ Nothing could ever have happened.
‘When you said you wanted to go to university, I would have stopped you if I could,’ her mother continued, as if now she’d started talking she’d made up her mind to go on. She gave Sarah a wry smile. ‘I would have moved into the halls to be with you if they’d let me. At the very least I wanted you to stay at home and commute, but then I thought of you travelling every day and I knew I couldn’t risk that either. All I really wanted was for you to stay at home with me where I could watch over you.’
‘But that’s why I needed to go into halls. I was so shy, Mum. It was horrible without you at first.’ She didn’t tell her mother that going to university had been almost as much about getting away from her over-protectiveness as it had been about getting a degree.
‘You must believe me when I tell you, Sarah, you were loved. Loved so much.’ She came and knelt beside her. ‘You still are. I haven’t always told you. I want you to live the life you dream of, reach for the sky – never, ever settle for second best. Will you promise me, that?’
‘I promise.’
Her mother laughed shakily. ‘Then, my child, if you do that I may not have been a good mother but perhaps I have been a good enough mother.’
It had been the only conversation of its sort they’d ever had and until now she’d forgotten her mother’s words. Or had she put them to the back of her mind, scared to think too deeply about them?
Back then, if he’d asked her, she would have married Matthew lik
e a shot. Had Mum been right all along? Was she staying with Matthew because it was easier than being on her own? If so, didn’t she owe it to him to break it off?
‘Sarah? Are you there?’ Matthew was back on the line. ‘Look, can we talk about this another time? I’ve got to get to a meeting,’ he spoke quickly. ‘You know how I loathe it when other people aren’t punctual. Phone me at home. No damn, not tonight, I’m out.’ More rustling of paper as he flicked through his diary. ‘Thursday evening. After eight. Call me then. Look, I really have to go.’
‘I’m not coming with you to Geneva, Matthew.’
