by Emma Snow
“Don’t worry,” she replied, squeezing his hand. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“He’s going downhill,” someone shouted.
A nurse took Martha by the arm, pulling her away as the activity grew more frantic, Peter’s eyes closing. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s wait outside for a minute.”
Martha looked back over her shoulder at the man who had taken her in, who had looked after her, given her a new life. He was out of sight, there were too many people around him.
Once in the corridor the nurse paused to say, “If there’s anyone important in his life, you should ring them,” before heading back inside, leaving Martha to walk in a daze towards the chairs at the end of the corridor, the subtext all too obvious from the nurse’s expression. She sank into a chair, realising her hands were trembling. Was he dying? Should she ring Ben?
She had never spoken to Benjamin Robertson, his son. She’d had the pleasure of taking a number of calls from the ex-Mrs Robertson, each of them laced with passive aggressive abuse aimed at Peter. But of the son, she knew only his name and his number. She knew his name because there was a framed photograph in the office at the castle of him as a boy. She knew his number because it was listed in the ancient phonebook that lived on the desk next to the enamel Dad’s Army mug filled with pens and the ledger which Peter still used instead of a computer to keep his accounts in check. The phone number might not even be up to date.
Should she try and ring him? Peter had mentioned that he had a son who he didn’t speak to, though she didn’t know why. She was just taking her phone out of her pocket when she noticed the sign on the opposite wall, a mobile phone in a red circle with a line through the middle. Standing up, she walked slowly back to the reception area, heading outside and taking a deep breath of night air. She rang Chloe.
“Hi,” she said when Chloe answered. “I know it’s your day off but I need you to do something for me.”
Chloe was a decent if ditsy employee. She was eighteen, had been working at the castle for a year and luckily didn’t ask any questions about why she was being sent back to work on her day off and long after closing time. She rang Martha back ten minutes later. “I’ve got the number for you,” she said. “It was in the book like you said. Are you ready?”
“Hold on.” Martha put her on speaker, getting ready to type the numbers in as they were said. Once she had it, she thanked Chloe before hanging up. She paused for a second. What was she even going to say? You don’t know me but your father is dying and you need to get over to York. What if the number wasn’t valid anymore?
She thought about Peter, about how the doctors and nurses had looked as they dashed around him. How she’d regret it if she didn’t even try. Then she rang the number Chloe had given her and waited for Benjamin Robertson to answer.
FIVE
It was a little after ten when the phone rang. At first, Ben was confused. It had been so long since anyone had rung him that he’d forgotten the thing was even connected. He could have sworn he’d detached it sometime the previous year and even as the ringing continued he couldn’t pinpoint the location. The phone was buried somewhere under the sofa.
He’d only come home to load his catch into the freezer. Another couple of minutes and he’d have been on the way back to the beach. He wouldn’t have heard a thing.
The whiskey bottle was waiting back on the shoreline, beside it was his fishing line with lantern illuminating it and the waves. Next to that was a blanket and the embers of the dying fire. The sun had set but he hadn’t needed it to find his way back to the cottage with the cool box, after so long living there, he could have found his way around with his eyes shut.
The cottage itself was on an island off the west coast of Scotland. Beside his place, there was a small village on the far side and a couple of farmhouses dotted about. There was a jetty at the village, bringing in the very occasional tourist or birdwatcher. Most people seeking out the peace and solitude of Scotland went further north. Jude Island was not easy to land on, nor did it look like much from the mainland. But Ben had come to love its secret charms.
He had arrived not long after his sister died. Aged eighteen when that happened, he had exchanged words with his parents that could not be taken back. He’d gone from the golden child to the black sheep over the course of one particularly bad drunken argument. The weeks after the funeral just made things worse, jabs into his heart from his father, him jabbing back, both of them unable to deal with the grief of the loss without hurting those around them.
He made his mind up to leave a month later. He left them a brief note, not saying goodbye, just telling them he wouldn’t be back. He had been in touch once since then. It was a year later, he had travelled through Europe and then back, ending up in Scotland on the shores of the west coast, watching the seals splash along the shoreline. Falling in with a group of fishermen, he was able to talk one of them into taking him across to Jude Island. Once he was there, he had another stroke of good fortune. There was a cottage the owner never used, having grown too old to make the twenty mile journey on foot through the hills to get to it. He was offered the use of the place for a peppercorn rent and so that was where he had settled.
His first night there, he found the farmer’s whiskey supply and got blind drunk, hoping to block out his memories of the past, of the part he’d played in his sister’s death.
He decided the next day to write to Peter and Erin, tell them he was safe, see if there was any chance of an apology from his father. He gave the number for the phone in the cottage, the only modern luxury in the place. He didn’t own a mobile phone anymore, it had gone into the sea somewhere off Venice.
He didn’t get a reply. He wasn’t surprised but it was one more piece of proof that he had done the right thing. They wanted nothing more to do with him and he would therefore have nothing more to do with them. He was comfortable with his own company anyway and in a place like this, he didn’t need to worry about anyone disturbing him. The village was twenty-five miles away. The walk to it took all day and he rarely undertook it, only when his supplies ran too low.
He grew his own food, almost starving that first winter when the snows came. But he got better at it with each attempt, his trips to the village becoming rarer as his knowledge of farming and foraging grew, helped by the array of self sufficiency books on the cottage shelves.
He spent his time writing and exploring for the most part. His novel was slowly taking shape. He had little hope that he would ever finish it but it wasn’t about the destination, it was about the journey. Sometimes, he would sit on the beach and think, his sister’s face coming to him, the castle looming up in his mind. On those occasions he would start to walk, on the worst days, he would run, not stopping until he was too exhausted to think anymore.
He came to know every inch of the island, and yet the place never truly felt like home. Something about it wasn’t quite right but he could never put his finger on what that was.
On the night the phone rang, he had been on the beach all day, fishing, watching the tide slowly coming in, enjoying the peace, feeling like the King of his own private Kingdom. It was possible at times to believe it was his island alone, that there was no one else in the world but him and his domain.
The life of a hermit had intrigued him for a long time. It had begun when he was eight years old. He found an old story in the castle library, the tale of a man who’d given up the life of a Lord and gone to live alone in the forests for the rest of his days, contemplating God, humanity, and the stars that filled the sky above him. The story had struck a chord with him. All the hustle and bustle and noise of humanity made him yearn all the more to be away from it.
Had he used his sister’s death as an excuse? It was possible that had been the catalyst that brought him to Jude Island but the likelihood was that he would have ended up somewhere like that anyway.
His father had wanted him to inherit the castle, to take over looking after it, telling him it was h
is duty, that he couldn’t walk away from generations of caretaking. “It’s been in the family for hundreds of years,” he ‘d said. “Promise me you’ll take it on.”
He hadn’t promised. His father had never forgiven him, offering it instead to his sister, calling him all the variations of ungrateful that he could think of. Then Zoë had drowned and he had again been told he had to take it on.
“Just because I’m all that’s left, doesn’t mean I suddenly have no say in things.”
His father had been furious with him for saying that, the conversation turning into a blazing row that lasted long into the night.
“And why are you all that’s left?” Peter had yelled, tears streaming down his face.
Forget it, Ben told himself as he sat on the beach that evening. It’s in the past.
With the sun long set and only the light of the fire to guide him, he had gathered up his catch and headed back to the house.
He had dealt with the fish, closed the freezer and crossed to the sink, turning the tap until ice cold water flowed down into the plughole. He was just drying his hands when the noise began. He turned, frowning, trying to pinpoint it.
It was coming from the living room.
The cottage was divided into kitchen, living room, and bedroom. There was no upstairs. What counted as a bathroom was outside, a compost toilet and a shower rigged to a tank that held rainwater. Electricity was supplied by two solar panels on the roof, attached by the farmer five years earlier, before his arthritis got too bad.
It made for a simple life with little need for outside help. If he could work out how to make the whiskey for himself, he’d not need to go into the village at all.
The ringing noise was coming from underneath the battered old sofa. He moved towards it, reaching down and pulling out the phone, knocking the receiver from the cradle as he did so.
He lifted it to his ear, hearing a woman’s voice talking. “Is that Benjamin Robertson.”
“Ben,” he said. No one had ever called him Benjamin.
“Mr Robertson? Is that you there? I’m sorry, the connection is very weak.”
“Who is this?”
“I’m calling from York. I work for your father.”
“And?”
“He’s been in a car accident. He’s in hospital.”
Ben was surprised by his initial reaction. It wasn’t joy. He felt no gladness that his father had been injured. Perhaps the years had tempered his emotions after all.
He had thought after their last argument that he’d lost all connection with his family, a fact reinforced after he’d sent the letter and had no response. “Is it serious?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Did he tell you to ring?”
“No, I just thought-”
“I don’t care what you thought. I have no interest in speaking to my father ever again. Do me a favour and forget this number. Understand?”
“I understand that you should be more grateful.”
He had been moving the receiver back to the cradle when he stopped. “Grateful? What the hell do you think I should be grateful for?”
“Because you might get a chance to say goodbye. Not everyone gets that.”
He opened his mouth to retort but she was still talking. “I’m not going to argue with a complete stranger over the phone. He’s in York hospital. He might get to go home, he might not. If you want to see him, you know where he is. Goodbye Mr Robertson.”
She hung up, leaving him holding the phone and trying to process what had just happened.
A car accident. How serious could it be? If it was that serious, he’d have died already. She was some nurse playing it safe. No, she wasn’t. What was it she’d said? That she worked for Peter? That was it.
Could it really be possible? He thought about the letter he’d sent. The fact his parents hadn’t even bothered to reply. Where was his mother? Why hadn’t she been the one to ring him?
He walked back to the beach, telling himself he was going to carry on fishing. But he walked past the line and over to the boat, looking inside to see what supplies he had ready.
An hour later, the boat was chugging forwards across the water to the next island, Ben calculating the timings. He would be over in half an hour, tie up the boat in the harbour, get to the ferry crossing. Take that to the mainland, then hire a car. The drive south was around four hundred miles. He might be there by sunrise or soon after.
She couldn’t hang up on him in person. He’d be able to tell her exactly what he thought of her rudeness. He’d also be able to tell his father what he thought of him. He hated him.
As the boat moved forwards in the dark, a tear rolled down his cheek. He wiped it away, telling himself it was spray from the churning waters, nothing more.
SIX
Samuel didn’t hear the conversation that took place over the phone in the castle office. He saw it through the glass of the window but from his distance he couldn’t hear a thing.
Standing behind the curtain wall, he was peering through a gap in the stone, the darkness keeping him perfectly concealed. It had been child’s play to hop over the boundary wall that surrounded the castle, a slight climb, a twist of his body over the top and he was inside, no one any the wiser. One minute he was in the car park, the next he was striding through the grass. He had a fluorescent jacket on and a clipboard in his hand. He had found over and over again that it was the perfect camouflage, no one questioned a man in a fluorescent jacket, they all assumed he was there for a reason, wherever he was.
He looked in through the well lit office window. Something was wrong. She had changed more than she should. She looked very different to how he remembered her.
He knew he was taking a risk in snatching her now. The day of the offering was approaching but it wasn’t here yet. Taking her now meant holding her until the allotted time. But the sight of her had made it hard to keep calm. He had to touch her again. It had been so long since he’d touched her.
As she moved to the edge of the office, flicking out the light, he flitted silently towards her, tapping on the glass before moving back into the shadows. He hoped it would work. It did.
She unlocked the door into the site, leaning out into the darkness. “Who’s there?”
He didn’t move. Let her take one more step. He held his breath, cursing silently as she hovered in place. “The castle’s closed,” she called out and as she spoke, he moved forwards.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I thought you were going to lock me in.” He fixed a warm smile on his face and was rewarded with one back.
“You startled me,” she said. “I thought everyone was off site by now.”
“I guess I lost track of time. I was doing a risk assessment for the council.”
“Right, I see. Well, come on through and I’ll let you out.”
She stepped aside and he walked into the visitor centre, waiting while she locked the door behind her. “This way,” she said, moving towards the front door.
“Am I too late to buy this?” he asked, picking up one of the decorative daggers displayed on the walls. It felt heavy and cold in his hand.
“Afraid so. The till’s shut down.”
“That’s a shame,” he said, taking a slow step towards her. “Are you sure I can’t buy it?”
She shook her head, not noticing that he was avoiding the camera above the till, making sure he stayed out of sight of the unblinking eye, not wanting his image to be captured or recorded. “Would you mind putting that back?”
“Of course,” he said, beckoning her over. “Where did it go?”
“Just up there,” she said, crossing the floor and pointing to the empty rack as the phone began to ring in the office.
As she turned away, he moved fast, pressing the knife to her throat. “Don’t scream,” he whispered into her ear.
“Please,” she gasped, trying to squirm away from him. “What are you doing?”
“We never got to finish ou
r game,” he replied, feeling himself harden as the heat of her body dug into him. He put an arm around her waist, drawing her closer.
“What? What game?”
“Don’t pretend, Martha,” he hissed in her ear. “I know you haven’t forgotten.”
“I’m not Martha,” she said, bursting into tears. “Please, you’ve got the wrong person.”
Samuel was momentarily stunned. She didn’t sound like she was lying and he had learned how to spot a liar from a mile away. But if she wasn’t Martha? “What’s your name?” he asked, still holding the knife to her throat.
“Chloe,” she stuttered out between sobs. “Chloe Sparks. Please, don’t hurt me.”
“Shush, Chloe,” he said, sniffing her hair, getting a hint of coconut from her conditioner. “We’re going to take a little walk, that’s all. If you’re good, you’ll be home in an hour.”
He had no idea if she was as good at spotting a liar as he was. He didn’t care. As long as she went with him, the rest would be easy. By the time she realised she wasn’t going home, it would be far too late.
SEVEN
Hiring a car took longer than Ben had anticipated. When he landed, the place was deserted. The taxi rank was just as empty and in the end he settled onto the bench just inside the door to the ferry terminal, using his bag as a pillow and closing his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t be too late by the time he got there.
He slept restlessly, each time he stirred, he had the horrible feeling that his father had died. It was hard to shake the idea and by the time the sun rose the next morning, he was anxious to be going. He sat up, noticing the light was on inside the car rental booth. He crossed to it and found the place manned by a bored teenage girl whose badge proclaimed, “Happy to help!”
“Hi,” Ben said, setting down the bag beside him. “I need a car.”
“All out.” She said it without looking up from her magazine.
“Excuse me?”
“All out.”
“You’re telling me you have no cars at all?”
