Beyond the Sea

by Melissa Bailey

  ‘Freya.’

  She took a sharp intake of breath and flicked on her bedside lamp. Then she turned back towards the doorway. She saw Marta standing there.

  ‘Jesus. You gave me a fright.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Her sister took a few steps into the room. ‘Are you okay? I heard you calling out.’

  ‘Bad dream,’ said Freya. She looked around the room again and breathed deeply. It was the same as usual.

  Marta made her way over to the bed and climbed in beside Freya. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  Freya nodded and recounted the dream. ‘I don’t understand it. So far since their deaths, everything I’ve dreamed about Sam and Jack has been a memory – with the one exception of the nightmare of Sam drowning. But this was not a memory. We looked at maps together, plotted boat trips and journeys to islands. But we never talked like this, about dangerous places close to home. And Jack never spoke to me in such a way.’

  No, this was a new kind of nightmare. She closed her eyes and tried to think. But the sweat now pooling at the base of her spine was distracting. She shivered.

  ‘It’s just a dream, Freya. It was probably brought on by being out on the sea, by our trip to Staffa yesterday. By finding the diary and hearing Sam’s voice again.’

  Freya nodded. That made sense, whereas the dream made no sense at all.

  ‘Shall I make you a hot drink?’

  ‘No. You go back to bed. I’ll get up. Do you want anything?’

  Marta shook her head and rose to leave. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  Freya nodded.

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing, you know. Just emotions.’

  Freya nodded again. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Good night, sis.’

  ‘Good night.’

  Freya closed her eyes and ran her fingers over her face. But in that moment of darkness behind her eyelids, she saw again the intensity of both Sam and Jack’s stare, their message for her, their words of warning. You must be very careful. There is danger for you here.

  Hours later, the words, so like Torin’s, still fluttered fretfully around Freya’s head as she sat at the kitchen table. What did they mean? Not only Torin’s words, but now Sam’s and Jack’s as well.

  She inhaled deeply, tried to breathe out the sick, agitated feeling she hadn’t been able to shed, and looked down at the map resting on the kitchen table. Her finger lightly touched the tiny island where she was now. The place they had all called home. Then it moved in a sweeping arc directly northwards over Coll and Tiree and then clockwise over Mull, Luing and Scarba, southwest over Jura and beyond it to Islay. Then it circled out into the Atlantic before moving northwards again. Further afield, to the north and west, were the outer isles of Barra, South and North Uist, Lewis and Harris. Freya’s finger strayed westwards, past the Flannan Islands, hesitating over St Kilda for a second, and then moved back to the waters nearest the lighthouse.

  She leaned closer into the map but she struggled to remember now exactly where Sam’s finger had been pointing in the dream. Had he been intending to single out particular islands, or simply the watery expanse around them? How far afield had he been signalling? Freya looked over the area directly east of the lighthouse. She knew that there were hundreds of rocky islets in this area, but nothing stood out – from her map at least. She reached for her tablets and took two of them with a large sip of steaming tea from the mug next to her. It was so hot it burnt her tongue. But she didn’t react. She still felt the chill of Sam’s words deep in her body. There is danger for you here.

  22

  THE NEXT DAY, Freya stood at the kitchen sink, her eyes closed, the warmth of sunlight upon her body. She relished it, surrendered to it, and for a brief moment was present only in its touch. She smiled, suspended in light. Its caress was soft, teasing, like the hand of a playful lover. It could almost have been Jack.

  For a second she hovered on the brink of remembrance, then her eyes snapped open. As the room came back into focus, goose bumps pricked her skin. She was in front of the kitchen window, her hands immersed in soapy water, on this tiny island, alone. She looked into the messy garden, saw the dead flowers on the bushes, the stark brightness of the enclosure wall. Gulls screeched overhead, winged flashes of white against a cobalt sky. Everything was the same and yet everything was different.

  Freya stood still for a minute, waiting for the sensation to pass. Then she dried her hands and filled the kettle. It was helpful, the doctor had told her, to do small things at times like this, indulge in distracting routines to keep panic at bay. Make a cup of tea, run a bath. Perhaps she would do both, she thought, as she went into the sitting room. She wanted to talk to Marta, but she had gone to Iona for the day to see a friend. So instead perhaps she would go for a walk. Make the most of the sunshine.

  As she looked out of the window to the blurred line of the horizon, there was a sharp knock on the cottage door. Freya jumped. She wasn’t expecting anyone and she wasn’t sure she would be able to sustain chitchat for very long. Reluctantly she moved back into the kitchen, wondering whether, if she left it long enough, whoever it was would just go away. She waited for a few moments and the knock came again. A hard rap – that of a man, she was sure of it. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Daniel stood before her. He was taller than she remembered, his hair darker, longer.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, when it became clear that Freya would not speak first. ‘I hope you don’t mind me barging in on you like this … but if it’s not convenient …’ His words faded out awkwardly as if he sensed her mood.

  She tried to rearrange her face into a smile. But she couldn’t quite manage it. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said eventually, hoping her tone didn’t sound too insincere. ‘I wasn’t doing anything. Please, come in.’

  She moved back into the kitchen and instinctively went to fill the kettle with water, realising as she picked it up that it was already full. She put it down again, feeling her nerves jangle.

  Daniel, next to her, surveyed the quiet interior of the cottage. ‘Is your sister here?’

  ‘No. She’s out.’ After she’d said it, Freya was aware that the remark might have sounded a little abrupt. She added, ‘She went to visit a friend.’

  ‘Ah, I see,’ said Daniel.

  Again Freya thought he was difficult to read. His eyes remained as inscrutable as they had the last time they’d met: distant, as if shutters had been pulled down behind them. And from his tone she couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or indifferent about this news. Not that it really mattered either way. She turned away from him and occupied herself with making coffee. The process soothed her. While she did this, Daniel spoke intermittently – about his boat, now fixed, the reprimands he had received from his family after the accident. It was small talk that she barely listened to, yet somehow it was comforting.

  Finally, they made their way into the sitting room. ‘I don’t remember much of this at all from the last time,’ Daniel said, smiling awkwardly. ‘Other than that it was weird to be here.’

  Freya nodded, sitting down and putting the cafetiere, milk and cups down on the table. ‘It was quite odd.’

  ‘Right,’ said Daniel. ‘I mean, I’ve been there once before.’ He pointed to the sofa. ‘Flat out and naked. As I said, weird.’

  Freya laughed. Yes, it was. She had undressed him and thought nothing of it at the time. Suddenly she felt strangely self-conscious. To give herself something else to concentrate on, she poured the coffee.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Daniel, breaking the silence. ‘I just wanted to say thank you. To you and Marta. I don’t think I said it properly before.’

  ‘It was no problem. Really. We’re just glad you’re okay.’

  Daniel smiled. ‘So how’ve you been?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Freya, noncommittally. She stirred milk into their coffee. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah. Busy. But no storms, no catastrophes.’

  Freya nodded, noticing that he was looking at
the bookshelves along the wall opposite the sofa. They were floor to ceiling, books sandwiched spine to spine, a real reader’s set of shelves. Jack had built them for her out of a beautiful rich walnut and she had loved to simply look at them, feel the warmth of the wood beneath her fingertips as she took her time selecting her next book. And yet, she thought, with a touch of sadness, she hadn’t read in such a long time.

  ‘Is that you and your family?’ Daniel’s question seemed to come from a long way away. ‘If you don’t mind me asking?’ he added.

  Freya finally registered him pointing to a photograph and nodded. ‘Yes, that’s me with my husband and son.’ She closed her eyes, anticipating his next questions and the awkwardness that would follow. So she decided she would save him from it.

  ‘There’s a lovely one, up there, of my son, Sam, running along the beach. He was five then.’ He was laughing, almost doubled over, one of his eyes obscured by his thick blond hair, the other glinting with delight. He had been running towards her and Jack when she had taken the picture. But what had he been laughing at? She couldn’t remember now. No doubt it had been something silly, inconsequential. But she knew he had that broad smile of total mirth on his face. ‘And I think there’s one of my husband, Jack, quite close to it. He was always slightly awkward when he was having his photo taken. God knows why. So photogenic.’ Freya paused and took a breath. ‘They died, last year, in a boating accident not far from here, although no one’s too sure where it happened. A freak storm, or something else untoward. Again, no one’s quite sure. The boat was found but the bodies never were …’ Freya’s voice ground to a halt and an uneasy silence settled over the room.

  Daniel moved back towards the sofa and sat beside Freya. He looked as if he couldn’t quite believe it. Then he shook his head.

  ‘God, Freya, I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘The pictures are beautiful. You look like you were happy.’

  ‘Yes, we were. Very happy.’

  ‘Well that must bring you some comfort.’ Daniel paused and then went on quietly, ‘And probably your fair share of despair.’

  Freya nodded, surprised. It was not what most people said aloud to the bereaved. Yet he was exactly right. She had been blessed to have experienced such happiness. Some people never did. Yet at the same time it cut her deep that she had lost it. That wound was so rough and jagged that she thought it incapable of ever being healed. It was constantly reopened by memory: bitter, gushing, bloody and painful. And by her dreams. She blinked away an image of Sam, staring at her with big warning eyes, and tried to change the subject.

  ‘Are you married?’ Freya asked.

  Daniel paused for a moment before answering. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head softly.

  ‘So you live alone too.’

  He nodded, glanced at her briefly and looked out of the window.

  Freya followed his gaze out to the ocean, its untameable force subdued in this moment, in the calmness of the day. She didn’t understand how she could bear to be here, surrounded by the thing that had stripped her of everything she loved. But perhaps that was the point. It was both the rub and the salve. It had taken everything from her and it was only that which could give something back, could give her peace. Until that time, she would remain, tossed back and forth on capricious waves, flotsam bobbing on a tide of grief.

  She turned back to find Daniel scrutinising her. ‘I imagine it’s hard not knowing what happened to them.’

  She nodded. ‘I think it’s part of why I came back – to try to understand that. Quite why I thought I could uncover something, when investigators and police and God knows who else haven’t been able to, I don’t know. But perhaps it’s what I thought I needed for closure, for finality.’ For peace and reconciliation, she thought, turning her gaze once more to the waves breaking across the shore. They were flinty, cold in spite of the sunshine. ‘Now I’m here, I understand that I will probably never get it. In all likelihood, I will never know what happened to them. Or what they were doing when they disappeared. But the remaining is important. Does that make sense?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘Perfectly.’

  She stood up, made her way to the bookshelves, singled out the picture of Sam on the beach. ‘And I am finding out some things.’ Freya drew her finger over the image of the laughing boy. ‘Something amazing happened the other day. I found another box of his things hidden in the lighthouse tower – a secret hideaway, perhaps for his most secret possessions.’

  ‘Really?’ Daniel smiled. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Things washed up by the ocean, I think. Shells, an old knife blade, some jewellery.’ For a moment she contemplated showing Daniel the necklace and other items and then she changed her mind. Maybe later. ‘Sam was obsessed with beachcombing. You won’t believe what he’s found over the years on rocks and beaches. We’ve got boxes and boxes of it. The sea is rich with pickings.’ She paused a moment, breathless, as she realised what she’d said. Then she continued. ‘There was a diary. That was the best of the haul. Marta and I have read a little. It was like hearing his voice, fresh, alive, having him speak to me again after all this time.’ Freya paused, her throat dry. ‘The first diary entry was about a trip Sam took to Staffa with his father. After we read it, Marta and I decided to go there, retrace their steps.’

  Daniel nodded, looking at her. ‘And did it help?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Fingal’s Cave was beautiful.’ Freya laughed as she looked back to the photos on the shelves. One of her and Jack, mounted in an antique silver frame, caught her eye. Their faces were in profile to the camera, their foreheads closely locked together, and they were laughing. Again she couldn’t remember why. Jack’s grey hair was pale against the shock of hers – long, black and wild. The light and the dark. If it was taken now, Freya would be the palest, the one who looked like a ghost.

  Her face blanched at the irony of it. She turned back to Daniel to find him still watching her. ‘Before it happened, you know, my hair was black.’

  He nodded, an almost imperceptible tilt of the head. He had seen the photographs after all.

  ‘The day after I heard the news, it was white. It turned overnight …’ she said before her words evaporated once more. It was traumatic for her to think and speak about it even now.

  For a moment Daniel was quiet. Then he smiled and said, ‘Like Finn.’

  Finn MacCool, the great mythical hunter, whose hair had also turned white prematurely. Perhaps even overnight. She thought of her son again, and of the diary and her trip to Fingal’s Cave. ‘Yes, Finn,’ she said. ‘I love the story of the Land under Waves. Do you know it?’

  Daniel nodded. ‘I do. You can’t live here all this time and not buy into that stuff just a little.’

  Freya smiled. ‘That’s what I’ve always thought.’

  23

  AFTER DANIEL HAD gone, Freya retrieved the necklace from Sam’s box and held it up to the light. She watched the late afternoon sunshine dance across it, and wondered, not for the first time, where it had come from, who it had once belonged to. It was beautiful, unique. Still, she thought, it could look better.

  Moving to the kitchen, she mixed baking soda with a little water in a bowl. When it had formed a paste, she dipped a damp sponge into it and rubbed it into the silver – it was an old trick of her mother’s and apparently worked wonders. After a few minutes she rinsed off the paste and held the necklace up to the light again.

  ‘Well, what do you know?’ Freya murmured to herself. The silver had regained a soft sheen.

  She dried the necklace with a clean tea towel and then put it on, taking care not to break it. Then she studied it in the hallway mirror. It was striking against the pale thinness of her neck. She took a step closer to the mirror, running her fingers over the silver loops. Then she went into her bedroom to lie down and read the second entry in Sam’s diary.

 
; 20 April 2014

  What a brilliant day.

  I don’t remember what time it was when Dad came into my room to get me up but I had already been awake for ages. We had our breakfast quickly and then got in the boat and raced to Mull. That was what it felt like anyway. Racing along. The wind and the tide were both with us Dad said.

  When we got to Fionnphort, Callum was already waiting. He was taking me to the Treshnish Isles where I’d never been before. I was so excited I could hardly wait. Callum said it was a good day for it – fine with a light breeze.

  After we waved goodbye to Dad and set off, Callum told me a bit about the isles. This is what I can remember:

  He said that there were 8 in total (as well as a few very small ones which didn’t really count as they were more like rocks),

  They are very remote and have been uninhabited for a long time, although they still have the remains of houses and a castle on them.

  The first one we came to was Bac Beag (which was very flat) but right next to it was Bac Mor, which means Dutchman’s cap because it looks like one.

  Lunga was the next one along. It was the biggest with a mountain, Cruachan, at the northern end. Callum told me that Lunga means ‘longship’ in Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. I asked if it was because its shape was a bit like a Viking longboat. Callum said that he thought it probably was that – but he said it in that tone that Dad sometimes has when he doesn’t really know. So I’m not sure that that really is the reason.

  Anyway, even if he didn’t know that, he knows most things and is an excellent sailor. It’s hard to land on Lunga as there’s no jetty. Callum had to attach the boat to what he called a ‘pontoon’ which floats. He then drove it onto the rocks. I jumped onto the pontoon thing and ran onto the rocky beach while Callum slipped the boat back into the bay and dropped anchor. Then he jumped off in all his wet gear and marched through the shallows to meet me. He’s so cool.