“Inary?” I heard Alex calling, from somewhere far away.
The room was spinning and I felt like I could double over with pain – I didn’t know why, I didn’t know what this searing ache in my heart could be. And then the phone rang, and I saw my brother’s name flashing on the screen, and at once I knew.
I could barely tap the green button, my hands were shaking so much. I listened to Logan say that our sister’s time was nearing its end, that the new heart she was waiting for, if it ever came, would be too late. I had to hurry back, or I might not see her alive.
2
I loved her since forever
Alex
She’s gone. The wall doesn’t protest as I pound it over and over again.
A mistake.
That’s what she called our night together, and then her mobile rang. There were broken words and tears, and I didn’t know if I was too furious to even look at her or if I wanted to hold her in my arms and comfort her and tell her it’d be okay, that I was sure her sister would be fine, that whatever happened I would always, always be in her corner. Always be there for her.
But I said nothing. I stood there, too conflicted to speak or move.
And then she finished getting dressed. Her face was strewn with tears – she was about to step out the door and, I feared, out of my life – and I grabbed her hand and turned her to face me. “Whatever last night was, Inary, don’t call it a mistake. Don’t call my feelings for you a mistake.”
She said nothing. The door closed behind her, and she was gone.
*
I’ve loved Inary since forever, or at least it feels that way.
The first time I saw her she had paint all over her. Even her lovely auburn hair – somewhere between red and brown, a warm, coppery hue that I’d only seen in paintings – had strands of purple in it. I’m obsessed with colours, and to see that girl crowned in purple and red and blue, like she’d just walked out of a Chagall masterpiece, took my breath away.
I was helping Lesley move into her new home. She’d hit me with a van full of stuff, and another few bin bags and boxes to pack my car with – she owned enough to fill two houses. She had also given me a set of keys, and I was about to try and extract them from my pocket while keeping hold of the box when I realised the door was ajar. I made my way in, and there she was. Inary. I’d heard so much about her, Lesley’s best friend from up north, but somehow we’d always missed each other.
“You must be Alex,” she said, smiling that sunny smile she has.
“You must be Hilary,” I replied.
“Inary,” she corrected me with a smile. “No H or L. N in the middle.”
“Oh, sorry . . .”
“Don’t worry,” she smiled again. “It happens all the time. My mum found the name in a book of Scottish fairy tales, never heard it anywhere else. Is that Lesley’s?” she asked, gesturing to the big box I was carrying.
“Yes. Yes. Not long to go. There are only another twenty-seven of these. We’ll be done in a week or so.”
She laughed. That’s good, I thought. I made her laugh.
“There’s a few bin bags as well. Oh, and Lesley is on her way with the van.”
“Oh no!” Inary swept a lock of hair behind her ear. She kept talking, and I could hear her words, but I couldn’t quite make them out. I was somewhere else, somewhere windy and beautiful, somewhere I had been as a child and long forgotten. “I knew Lesley was a bit of a hoarder, but I didn’t realise she had so much stuff! Come, I’ll show you her room. At the end of the hall, there. Alex?”
I shook myself. “Yes. Yes, sorry.”
“You’re a man in need of a cup of tea!” She laughed again. She was so . . . alive. Beside her I felt grey, like she had all the colours I’d ever need.
“That would be great. Thank you.” I put down the box in Lesley’s room and followed her into the kitchen, desperately thinking of something else to say. “So, Lesley said you’re Scottish too . . .” I said.
“Not that I have an accent or anything . . .”
I smiled. She had a soft, musical Highland lilt. “Whereabouts?”
“Glen Avich, not far from Aberdeen. You probably won’t have heard of it, it’s tiny. You?”
“I was brought up in Edinburgh . . .”
“Hello!” Lesley entered, carrying another box. She dumped her burden on the floor with a sigh, her mane of tiny braids falling over her face.
“Hello! I already started painting!” Inary said.
“I can see that!” Lesley replied, taking in Inary’s paint-sprayed clothes. “So you met Alex. At last! I’ve wanted you two to meet for ages . . .”
I went to University with Lesley’s brother, Kamau – that’s how Lesley and I met. There was never anything more than a friendship between Lesley and me, though I often wondered why. We got on so well. Still, it never happened. Once it was clear to everyone involved, including us, that we would only be friends, we became very close. It didn’t stop Kamau trying to set us up though, even if by then I’d had a girlfriend for a while, Gaby.
And then I met Inary, covered in colours like a little earthed rainbow. Everything about her – her small body, the sound of her voice, the way she smiled – was so full of life, she made me come alive too.
I could sense Lesley looking at me looking at Inary, and I knew she would guess what I was thinking. She knew me too well. I almost ran out of the room, mumbling something about twenty-seven boxes and a van to unload.
The rest of the day was a blur. Lesley’s insane amount of stuff made its way from the van to her flat, bit by bit, while I caught glimpses of Inary painting, making tea and singing along to the music Lesley put on. We finished the day with fish and chips, our plates balanced on boxes – there were no sofas or chairs yet – and then we walked to a pub in Battersea, not far from my house. It was dark already, and we hurried on to get out of the cold. I went to order a round of drinks while the girls sat at a table.
As I was leaning on the counter, waiting my turn, I felt a presence beside me. I turned to see that Inary had followed me; she was standing very, very close, our arms touching.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll get the drinks.”
“I know. I just thought I’d keep you company.”
Tenderness came to her as easily as breathing. She was unafraid, unashamed, wearing her emotions like a crown.
A few weeks later I broke up with Gaby.
Now three years on, after an endless will we/won’t we, she’d finally spent the night with me. And then she’d called it a mistake, and it hurt like hell.
She’d gone back to Glen Avich, swept away from London by the horrific news about her sister. I couldn’t believe that Emily was dying – Emily, as vivid and cheerful as a little windmill, one of those brightly coloured ones that people put in their gardens. Emily, five feet of spark and cheekiness and love of life.
The first time she came down – she only visited twice; the journey to London was exhausting for her – she and Inary didn’t stop chatting for a week solid. They were like sparrows, chirping and twittering to each other, so happy to be together.
I couldn’t quite believe it.
I wanted to be there for Inary – I had to be there for her. But the question was, could I keep doing this to myself? Was I some sort of crutch she used and then discarded? I didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Her fears and doubts didn’t give her the right to use me that way.
*
I went to work feeling like a zombie and waded through it as though through a field of mud. No word from Inary. The stupid phone went all day with messages and emails and stuff I didn’t care about, but none of them were from Inary. She clearly meant what she said.
As soon as I got home, I drowned all my thoughts in a glass of whisky, and before I knew it, it was dawn. She was in Glen Avich by now. She might as well have been on another planet.
Why, why did she say it was a mistake? Why, as she said those terrible words, did she look fr
ightened? Frightened of me, of us?
My fingers, clumsy with alcohol and sleeplessness, started composing a text. And then I deleted it. I lay on my bed, studying a crack on the ceiling. It was then that I spotted something on the floor near the window. It was an enamel daisy chain – the necklace Inary was wearing last night.
I sat on the window seat and stayed there for a long time, weaving the necklace between my fingers, looking out to the London skyline and thinking of home.
3
The last word before silence
Inary
I went back to my flat and stuffed a bag with random clothes and my laptop, the taxi still waiting downstairs to take me to Heathrow. As soon as I got to the airport I called Rowan, my boss at Rosewood Publishing, to say I wouldn’t make it to work on Monday and that I needed extended leave. And then I called Lesley. I was falling somewhere deep, bottomless – a dark well – and I needed her to drag me back to the surface.
“Oh, Inary, I’m so sorry . . .”
“Yes. Yes. Well . . .” I was struggling not to cry. “We sort of knew it could happen, but we always thought she’d get the operation and she’d be fine . . .”
“She might be okay in a few days. It might just be a false alarm . . .”
“I hope so,” I said, and I did, against all the evidence, in spite of what Logan had told me. I did hope so, with all my heart. Miracles, after all, do happen. And that was what we needed: a miracle.
“If you need anything, just call me. Any time, day or night,” she said, and she sounded so kind, so Lesley, that I couldn’t hold the tears in any longer, and I had to finish the conversation quickly. After I put the phone down, a text from her came through – the image of a little green clover for good luck. I realised she hadn’t asked me why I hadn’t come home last night. Just as well. I just couldn’t discuss that now, anyway.
It was like a nightmare, one I couldn’t wake up from. All of a sudden, my life had been turned upside down. Again. Things were pretty messed up before – losing my mum and dad in the accident, and the Lewis thing, and now this: my Emily . . .
Maybe I’d known for a while that something wasn’t quite right with Emily, I’d just refused to see it. In the last few weeks there had been a brittle, forced cheerfulness in Emily’s voice. I’d meant to ask Logan if something was up, but I was due to visit the following week for a few days anyway, so I thought I’d see with my own eyes. It would save me from having to speak to Logan more than was strictly necessary. My brother had never forgiven me for having moved to London, and he didn’t make a secret of it.
And he was right. I left Emily, and now she was dying, and I’d been away for three years. Away from her, away from Glen Avich, away from Logan, who was left shouldering it all.
Tears started streaming down my face again. Thankfully from where I was sitting nobody could see me. I slipped on my iPod, trying to get a grip of myself.
I wanted to speak to Alex so badly. I craved his voice. But it was all too much; I just couldn’t deal with all that too. Spending the night with him had been a bad decision on so many levels. As if I could let myself be in that situation again. Let myself be broken into pieces again.
Three years ago I was engaged to be married. Although Lewis came from Kilronan, a village down the road from mine, our orbits had never collided until we both enrolled on the same course at Aberdeen University. I bumped into him – literally – in the cafeteria, and his scalding coffee burnt my arm. I still have the scar, a white, discoloured patch on the inside of my arm, where the skin is softer, more fragile. How symbolic.
So yes, we ended up in A&E, with him even more upset than I was and apologising over and over again. A few months later we were living together. I’d never felt that way about anyone before – it was like stepping into a new world, a new solar system where he was the sun. We moved to a house in Kilronan and he insisted we get engaged. It was like his life depended on it. Soon after, the venue was booked and the wedding dress was hanging in my wardrobe, cocooned in thin white fabric. I wore his grandmother’s wedding ring.
Then one day, eighty-nine days before our wedding – yes, I counted – he changed his mind.
Just like that.
Maybe it was cold feet, maybe he realised he had fallen out of love, maybe he’d never actually been in love. But I suspected he was scared. Scared because in a moment when the intimacy was complete, in a moment when I wanted him to know everything about me, I told him about my gift – and since then things had never been the same. He probably thought I was some kind of freak.
I moved back home with Logan and Emily, but I couldn’t bear to walk the streets of Glen Avich any more. People kept looking at me that way – you know, the poor thing look. I kept bumping into his mum and brothers everywhere. I had to drive past our former house to get to the bloody supermarket. It was torture. Everywhere spoke of him and the life I was supposed to have, everywhere I looked there were memories of us.
Not long after, in a haze of grief, I went to see Lesley in London while I figured out what to do next. I had introduced her to Lewis once when she was up in Glen Avich for a visit. I’d sensed she didn’t like him much, although she never said. I wish I had paid more attention to her moods around him.
In one of those weird moments of serendipity, Lesley told me that her housemate was going to teach English in Singapore and that she was looking for someone else to share a new flat; and an old University friend emailed me to say that Rosewood Publishing was looking for an editorial assistant. It was the perfect opportunity, a new life laid out for me to seize. I had the chance to leave Lewis and what he did to me behind.
I was moving to London without plans to ever live in Scotland again.
A few days before I left, Emily came into my room as I was finishing my packing. We were just back from a farewell meal in the Green Hat with Aunt Mhairi and our cousins. It had been bittersweet, the end of an era for me, for us all – Kilronan was twenty minutes away from Glen Avich, but London was another planet.
“Take this,” Emily said, offering me something sheer and weightless, the colour of Loch Avich in the summer – something between aqua, turquoise and blue. She’d made it as part of her project in college – they’d even had a small fashion show with all the graduates’ work showcased. Emily’s collection was the best, of course. I was so proud of her.
“Hey, no . . . That’s yours, I can’t take it.”
“You’re going to need dressy clothes a lot more than me, Inary! With all those glamorous gigs Lesley will take you to!” She smiled her breezy smile. Emily and I had this in common: we tended to be cheerful most of the time.
“You’ll have nights out too. You don’t plan to always be stuck in the house with Logan, do you?”
She sighed, and I remember that for a second her face had looked nearly other-worldly, translucent – as if she were there with me, in my room, but at the same time she was far away already. Like her presence in this world was only transient.
“I want you to have it, and I want you to go and be happy and not look back. I want you to live for me. To do all the things I want to do but can’t.”
Live for me. Her words cut too deep. I couldn’t speak for a moment. It was as if she had given up on life, and that wasn’t the plan. We were supposed to prove the doctors wrong. Emily would outlive us all, I was convinced of that.
And there I was, my bags packed, abandoning her.
“Maybe this is a mistake . . .” I agonised.
“It’s not a mistake. Don’t let Logan convince you of that. You must go, Inary! You must build a life for yourself, and you will. I can’t just now, but you can and you will. Away from . . . everything that happened.” She didn’t mention Lewis, but his name hung between us, unspoken.
“Logan is furious. He’s barely said a word to me.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t want you to go because he’s worried I’ll get mortally ill on him, but I won’t. Besides, there’s a good chance I’ll be
on the heart transplant list soon. We’ll be fine,” she said, and laughed. “Logan’s just forever looking for a reason to sulk!”
“He has a point.”
“Yeah, well.” She shrugged. “You’ll be the London branch of our family. You’ll do us proud. Look . . .” She smiled again, resting her hand on the pile of manuscripts sitting on my desk ready to be packed, all lovingly tied with ribbons to keep the sheets together. “You’ve been working on your books for forever. Giving up sleep, spending all weekends in your room, typing away . . .”
“Because I’m a geek, really . . .” I laughed.
“Yes, you are!” She laughed too. “But also because you are so dedicated. You have never wanted anything else, have you?” I shook my head in response. She was right. Ever since I was a little girl I had never really wanted much else but to write. “You’ve got to go and make your dream come true.”
“It’s not that simple . . .”
“It is really, Inary.” She twisted a lock of my hair around her finger, in one of those little affectionate gestures of hers. “All you need is determination . . .”
“And talent . . .” I said, my voice dripping with self-doubt.
“Yes, talent, and you have it. I know you have it and I know you’ll make it. Whether I’m here to see it or not . . .”
“Don’t say that, Emily. You’ll get on the list and you’ll get a new heart and everything will get better.” To hear her talk this way was like a stab to my heart.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she laughed. “I still have a bit of life left in me! I’ll come and see you in London and go for nights out with Lesley’s crazy friends . . .”
“Exactly! Which is why you need your top . . .”
“Tell you what. Hold on to it for me, I’ll wear it when I come and see you.”
“Deal.”
She didn’t really keep her part of the deal, though. She could only come to see me twice, and a night out with Lesley’s friends would have been too much for her. Soon even the car journey with Logan was out of the question – it would have been too tiring. And I didn’t keep our deal either; I still didn’t have a book to my name, and I didn’t even know what I was supposed to write any more.
Take Me Home Page 3
