An Island of Our Own

by Sally Nicholls

  “Not an expensive bike. Not, like, a super-fast bike with turbochargers or anything. Just an ordinary bike! Without lights, or brakes even.”

  “You need brakes,” I told him.

  But I don’t think he was listening.

  “They get birthday presents,” said Jonathan firmly. He changed the subject.

  You know how sometimes there are people you’ve known all your life, but you’ve never talked to them about anything more important than what boys you fancy or what bands you like? And then there are other people you’ve only just met, but you find yourself talking to them about things you’ve never shared with anyone else?

  That’s what Kate was like. After birthday presents, we moved onto parents, and Uncle Evan, and how useless Jonathan’s dad is, and how we never see him, and Kate told us about her dad “who’s there – I mean, he pays the bills and buys me Christmas presents, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper conversation with him about anything that really mattered to me.”

  And Jonathan said, “I know. I worry that I’m going to turn into that sort of dad to Davy. It takes so much brain dealing with the day-to-day stuff like homework and shopping, I just don’t have enough space left to think about anything else.”

  I thought Kate would say, “No, you won’t!” or “I bet you’re a great dad really!” But instead she went off on a long tangent about how hard it was not to turn into your parents, and how you always noticed the faults in other people that you had in yourself.

  “But it works the other way around too!” she said. “You notice the things other people are good at that you’re good at too. Like – what was your mum best at?”

  Jonathan thought. “She was funny,” he said. “She told good stories. And she was always there – you could rely on her not to run away, like my dad did.”

  “Well, there you go!” said Kate, beaming at him.

  In the end, I started falling asleep too, so Kate let me go to bed in her room instead of the living room. Kate’s room had a high ceiling and an old-fashioned fireplace. There was mould growing on the wall, and a place where it looked like someone had kicked a hole in the plaster. (Kate kept old wine bottles with candles stuck in the top of them in the hole.) The walls were covered in tour posters of bands I’d never heard of, and student plays, and protest marches, and photographs of Kate and her friends in pubs and on muddy walks halfway up mountains and dressed in silly costumes. I recognized Katniss Everdeen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hermione Granger. She looked pretty happy in most of the pictures. I wondered if Jonathan would have been living in a room like this if he’d gone to university instead of looking after us. Probably not. Jonathan wasn’t as cool as Kate. But still.

  I was pretty tired, but I lay awake for a while, listening to Kate and Jonathan talking in the living room. I think they were trying to be quiet, but every so often I could hear Kate’s delighted laugh. Once or twice I heard Jonathan laughing too.

  I fell asleep listening to their voices in the next room, thinking how lovely it was going to be going on an adventure, how nice it was to have somewhere to be going to, and how wonderful that people were so kind.

  When I woke up a few hours later, I could still hear them laughing.

  CARRIED SLEEPING ACROSS A FRONTIER

  When I next opened my eyes, it was morning. I was in Kate’s bed. Warm summer light was coming through the windows. It was going to be a nice day.

  I lay there for a while, enjoying the laziness of it. Then I got up and went into Davy’s room. Davy was sitting on the bed in his pyjamas playing with his Lego Millennium Falcon.

  “Where’s Jonathan?” I said. “Is anyone else up?”

  Davy shrugged. “I’ve been playing,” he said. “Do you think Kate has any breakfast?”

  We went and knocked on the living-room door. There was a grumbling sort of noise from inside, then Kate’s voice saying sleepily, “Come in…” We opened the door. Kate and Jonathan were lying on the sofa, which had been made into a bed. Kate was wearing green pyjamas with cats on them, and Jonathan was wearing a T-shirt that said RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

  “What are you doing?” I said. “Jonathan! Why are you in bed together?”

  “Holly…” said Jonathan.

  Kate pushed her red hair out of her eyes and gave a huge yawn. “Is this how they usually wake you up?” she said. “We were sleeping! It got late and we didn’t want to wake you up! Honestly!”

  “Hmm,” I said. “Is there breakfast? Can we eat it?”

  “Probably,” said Kate. “Do I have to get up right this very second? If you make me and Jonathan a cup of tea, I might be persuaded to make you pancakes.”

  “I will!” yelled Davy. He ran into the kitchen to fill the kettle.

  Jonathan gave Kate an impressed look. “Tea in bed,” he said. “You are an evil genius.”

  “I have my moments,” said Kate. “And I’ve had another one. I think I should come with you. No – don’t argue,” she said, as Jonathan opened his mouth. “Let me finish. I’ve been to Orkney. It’s great, but it’s less great if you don’t have a car. You have to spend ages waiting for buses, and looking for bus stops, and lugging Scrabble sets around while you try and find the ferry port. It’ll be much easier and quicker if I’m there. I’ve got a tent. And I’d love to come. Treasure-hunting! I’ve never been on a treasure hunt.”

  “Are you sure?” said Jonathan. “I don’t know… you’ve been so good to us already…” He hesitated.

  I could see him wanting and wanting to say yes, but not wanting to ruin it.

  “Of course you should come,” I said. “And Jonathan thinks so too. He’s just too cowardly to say so.”

  The ferry didn’t leave Aberdeen until late afternoon. Jonathan and I had planned things to do in Aberdeen that didn’t cost any money, in case Kate didn’t want us to hang around her flat – this hadn’t taken very long, because there wasn’t much. Mostly, there was a park and some museums and an art gallery and a library.

  Now we’d met Kate and Kate had met us, though, things were different. We had a lovely day. Kate made pancakes, which we ate with bananas and Nutella, and tasted totally amazing. Then we watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, because we’d never seen it and Kate said it was one of her favourite films.

  “Now I feel a failure,” said Jonathan, when we’d finished. “We shouldn’t be in here watching telly. We ought to be off looking at art and dancing in carnivals.”

  “Wait ’til we get to Orkney,” said Kate. “Ferris Bueller would have loved Orkney.”

  After we’d watched the film, Jonathan made mashed-potato surprise, which is mashed potato with whatever’s left in the fridge mashed into it, and we spent the afternoon playing a silly card game where you had to fight monsters, which Davy turned out to be very good at. Then he went off to play with his Lego, and Kate taught us how to play another game where you had to build roads and castles, and invade each other’s cities. It was the most fun I’d had in ages.

  And then it was time to go.

  Kate’s car was little and bright orange. There was a handle on both doors that you used to wind down the windows – except one window was taped shut with gaffer tape and didn’t wind.

  “It’s called the Satsuma,” said Kate. “Respect the Satsuma.”

  The ferry was enormous. Big enough to take us to France, or maybe even around the world. We had to drive the car into a great car deck at the bottom, like the belly of a mechanical whale. We parked, and then ran up to stand on the deck and wave goodbye to Scotland.

  “Goodbye, Scotland!” Davy called. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!”

  Then we went inside and explored. There was a cinema, and a shop, and a bar, and a cafeteria, and a kids’ play area with Viking helmets, and a treasure hunt with Vikings hidden all over the ship. Then we found a table, and Kate bought everyone hot chocolate.

 
“Please don’t buy us things,” said Jonathan.

  “You can pay me back when you’re millionaires,” said Kate cheerfully. “Seriously, I consider this trip an investment in your treasure-hunting business. I expect ten per cent of the profits.”

  “There might not be any profits,” said Jonathan.

  “What would you spend them on if there were?” said Kate.

  “A castle!” said Davy. “With – with – with towers that shoot lasers – powpowpowpow! And a water slide! And a spaceship – an X-Wing! And a dragon.”

  “Books,” I said. “Lots and lots of books! I’d just go into Waterstones with a big bag and load it up with books. And new clothes. And make-up, like the rest of the girls have, and party clothes so I can go to parties and not look stupid. And a guitar. And—”

  “A childminder,” said Jonathan. “And university.”

  “You know,” said Kate, “I bet university wouldn’t cost you that much. You don’t have to pay tuition fees if you’re poor. And you could get a student loan.”

  “I couldn’t rent a two-bedroom flat in London on a student loan,” said Jonathan. “Even with the foster-care money, I couldn’t. Or buy all the stuff those two need. I mean, do you know how much castles that shoot lasers cost?”

  “I suppose so…” said Kate. “But there are places in London you can do part-time degrees. My aunt did one, and she’s a single mum. They have all the lectures in the evenings. Maybe when Davy’s a bit older, you could do one of those.”

  “I’d never sleep ever again!” said Jonathan. But I could tell he was a bit interested. I could see him thinking about it as the ferry chugged on north, and north, and north.

  The journey to Orkney took for ever. At first it was afternoon, then it was evening, then the sun set all pale orangey pink over the ocean, and it was night. We ate cheese sandwiches and Penguin biscuits. We played Spoons and Shop Snap and Uno and I-Spy and I’m a Famous Person, Who Am I? and Twenty Questions and Ghost. In the end, Davy fell asleep, curled in a ball with his head on Jonathan’s lap. We had to wake him up so he could go to the loo and clean his teeth before we got to Orkney and had to sleep in a field.

  It was weird, sitting there in this false, bright, manufactured room, floating on a sea of darkness. We could be going anywhere, I thought. Perhaps we’d land and we’d be in another world.

  “Carried sleeping across the frontier,” said Kate, when I told her this.

  “Huh?”

  “C. S. Lewis. The guy who wrote the Narnia books. It’s how he described being converted to Christianity. But it always made me think of this bit in The Odyssey – do you know The Odyssey?”

  “Er, no,” I said. “I’m twelve.”

  “OK,” said Kate. “Well, I read it at university. It’s great. Mad, but great. Odysseus spends the whole poem trying to get back to Ithaca, which is the island he comes from. And at the end he gets a lift back from these sailors, and he falls asleep on the boat. And they don’t want to wake him up, so they just dump him on the beach and leave him there. And when he wakes up he doesn’t know where he is, because he’s been away for twenty years. But he’s home all the same. Kinda cool.”

  I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “Kinda cool.”

  It was really late when we landed. Jonathan’s plans for this part of the trip had always been a bit vague. We had our tent, from when we used to go on camping holidays with Mum, but we didn’t know where we were going to put it up. We’d vaguely thought that Orkney was all grass and fields, so there must be somewhere, right? But now we were here, it didn’t look like fields. It looked like a little port town, with boats in the harbour, and houses, and concrete piers, and all the cars driving off down streets like they knew where they were going. It also looked dark. It was a long time since I’d put up a tent, and even then I’d mostly just done what Mum told me to do. I wasn’t at all sure I’d know what to do.

  Having a car made all that much easier. And Kate seemed to know a bit where she was going – she knew how to get out of Kirkwall, which was the main town, anyway. We parked in a lay-by and pitched the tents in a field. And she knew how to put up a tent – which meant that Jonathan had someone to help him. I just had to stand up and point the torch app on Jonathan’s phone where they told me to point it. It still took ages, though. And was horribly, hideously dark. And then once the tents were up, we still had to put in all the tent pegs.

  “I don’t want to put in tent pegs,” said Davy. “I want to go to sleep!”

  He was ever so whiny, which is unusual for Davy. Usually he’s really good, but this was his second late night in a row, and he was nearly in tears, he was so tired. I wondered if maybe we ought to have left him with Gran and Grandad. They aren’t really supposed to have overnight guests in their home, but I suppose it would have been OK just for a couple of days.

  Once we were inside the tent, it was better. The tent was quite big. It had a place where you’re supposed to put tables and chairs and stuff, and then two little bedrooms at the back, with an extra layer of tent to keep you warmer. I had one room and Jonathan and Davy had the other.

  “This is OK, isn’t it, Davy?” I said. It was OK. We had sleeping bags, and yoga mats, and a torch shining through the wall of the tent, making everything look orange.

  “Be quiet!” said Davy. “I’m going to sleep now!” And he did. I’d been expecting it to take a while to get to sleep, because after all I was lying on a yoga mat on the ground in a field in Scotland. But I was so tired that I’d barely had time to think this thought before I was gone.

  I woke once in the night, and heard the rain pattering down on the tent roof. An owl hooted somewhere. Carried sleeping across a frontier, I thought, and drifted back into sleep.

  A BED FOR THE NIGHT

  We got up early the next day, before a farmer could come and find us camped in his field. In the daylight, everything looked different. A clear new day, left wet and rinsed and sparkling by the rain, newly painted that morning on a big sheet of paper, with nothing ruined yet. The air felt light and cold and fresh. It smelt of salt and grass and mud and rain.

  “Come on,” said Kate. “Let’s have a look around. The ferry doesn’t leave for hours yet. Let’s go and look at some of the old stuff!”

  We drove around for a bit, enjoying the clear, bright morning. The island was mostly flat. There were hardly any trees – just patchwork fields in yellow and green and brown, and walls, and little roads, and behind us the low, long line of the hills. Here and there among the fields you could see little grey or white houses, sprouting up like strange Orkney mushrooms. Hardly anyone else was up yet, it was so early.

  “Look!” said Kate. And there was a huge great ring of stones, each one two or three times as tall as a person, standing alone and eerie in the early morning light.

  “What are they?” said Davy.

  “Standing stones,” said Kate. “They’re thousands and thousands of years old. The people who put those stones up were old when the Romans came.”

  “Why did they?” he said.

  But Kate didn’t know. “No one knows,” she said. “Isn’t that cool?”

  None of Jonathan’s London friends thinks it’s cool not to know things. They like facts, and data, and answers. But I thought Kate was right. Not knowing was a little bit exciting.

  “All stone is old,” Jonathan said. He was grumpy because he hadn’t had coffee yet.

  Kate laughed. “I can’t decide if that’s really deep or really stupid,” she said.

  The little town where the ferries left from was called Kirkwall. It was the biggest town in Orkney, but still small. Like, even the biggest street of shops was about half as long as the street of shops where we live in London. The town was just a huddle of low houses clustered around the harbour. And even the harbour was tiny. There were fishing boats, and yachts, and a jetty where our ferry would leave from, and no
t much else.

  “What do you mean, not much else?” said Kate, like I was insulting her personal island. “Look! There’s a cathedral! A pink cathedral! Right there!”

  We studied Kate’s cathedral thoughtfully.

  “It’s not very pink,” I said. “More sort of pinkish brown.”

  “I thought cathedrals were supposed to be bigger than that,” said Davy.

  “They are,” said Jonathan. “Come and have a look at St Pauls, woman. That’s a proper cathedral.”

  “Yeah,” said Kate. “But does London have an Orkney Wireless Museum? I think not.”

  We found somewhere to park Kate’s car, and then sat in a row on the edge of the harbour and ate chocolate-spread sandwiches for breakfast. The harbour smelt of petrol and sea salt. There was a wind blowing off the sea which flung my hair up into my face and made me glad we’d brought cagoules. It had been summer in London when we’d left – bare-legged, sunhat weather. Here it was sunny, but cold.

  While we waited, I called Gran’s friends on Papa Westray.

  A lady with a strong Scottish accent answered. “I wondered when I’d be hearing from you,” she said. “You’re getting the nine-twenty ferry, are you?”

  “Yes,” I said. The nine-twenty ferry only took us to the next island, Westray. “Um. There didn’t seem to be another ferry to you on a Sunday. But Gran said—”

  “Oh, you can come across in the minister’s boat,” the lady said. “We’ll come over and meet you. I’ll tell the boat to wait.”

  The minister’s boat!

  “OK,” I said. “And – um – our friend Kate is coming as well. I’m sorry. I know we probably ought to have told you.”

  “Oh, well,” said the lady. “As long as she’s happy to sleep on the floor, it’s no odds to me.”

  We went to have a look at the cathedral, but it was shut. When we came back, there was a little huddle of people waiting for a ferry. They were all dressed in cagoules and fleeces and woolly jumpers and hats, even though it was supposed to be July. Other than that they looked like ordinary, middle-aged grown-ups.