Skein Island

by Aliya Whiteley

  Then he took the camera home, laden with hundreds of images, and enjoyed each one in turn.

  This is not a man you should feel sympathy for. He was not just lonely. He didn’t imagine these women were his friends or his lovers. He imagined they were his slaves, and that he was making them lie still under his gaze to pay them back for seeing his ugliness in return. He was not a man who could be fixed by a real relationship, and he did not want to be fixed. He wanted to get worse. He wanted his obsession to define him, and so he started to plan his escalation to a new level of evil. He came up with a way to make a real woman suffer the worst humiliation possible, and he looked for an opportunity to implement it.

  The local library provided him with that opportunity.

  He wasn’t a member of the library, but he passed it occasionally on his walk into town. It closed late on a Thursday, and from the darkness outside it was possible to see the lone woman who worked there. She would be shutting down the computers, and shelving the final returns of the day. What she looked like wasn’t important to him. All that mattered was her vulnerability. She was alone, a shining light in the black pit, as fragile as a candle.

  He watched her for months before making his move, and it was much easier than he had ever dared to hope for. He simply stood up from his hiding place behind the hedge and walked into the library. She looked up with a welcoming smile, and he told her what he wanted from her, wondering what she would do.

  To his delight, she simply obeyed him. It was as if he were a god and she was a mere mortal. He didn’t even need a weapon; his voice was enough. Her fear gave him power, and he had never felt so wonderful. The next ten minutes were the best of his life.

  He made her undress, and lie down on her back. Then he took out his camera.

  He started by taking headshots, then torso, keeping the delicate shell of her navel in the centre of the picture. He moved on to her limbs, trying to make sure the images would overlap so that he could piece her back together like a puzzle later, back in his flat. He wanted to make a complete map of her: her veins, the path of her arteries.

  That was the beginning.

  Then he told her to open her legs. He knelt between them, taking care not to touch her, and he photographed every fold of her labia, every line of her tight, puckered anus.

  He told her to kneel, and to lift her arms. She had a small mole under her left armpit, from which three fine, barely visible hairs grew. He photographed them in an ecstasy of discovery.

  Finally, he told her to open her mouth.

  He photographed her tongue, her throat, her tonsils. He photographed the glistening droplet of her epiglottis, and the slippery descent that led to her stomach. Her teeth were creamy yellow; he thought maybe she drank too much coffee, and told her to drink more water in the future. She started to cry, making an ugly, desperate expression, and he photographed that too, and the slow trickle of tears into her open mouth.

  Then he told her to stay still, and he left. He didn’t even bother to check if she obeyed him. What she did no longer mattered. He had captured the essence of her. He took it home, the purity of her, and downloaded it, and looked at it ceaselessly, remembering how it felt to be a god.

  But soon his ability to remember that feeling wore off.

  Within a matter of days he began to plan again.

  I stop talking, and the room is silent.

  I am serene. I have never felt relief like it. The words are out of me and I have claimed my mouth as my own once more.

  ‘Is it true?’ says David. He has collapsed inwards, and looks like a smaller man. I never thought I could feel so good as he stands opposite me, deflated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you know you can tell me anything? It wasn’t your fault, no matter how you reacted. There’s no reason to feel that you weren’t brave enough. There’s no shame in being a victim of somebody like that.’

  I shake my head. ‘You don’t understand. There is no shame. I lied for your sake. Because I knew it would become all you would see when you looked at me. I knew you’d be consumed by it.’

  ‘You did it for me?’

  I put my arms around him. The moment that I knew was coming is here. I had hoped it would not appear until after Christmas, so that I could have that memory, but it’s too late for that now. We have tasks to do, and I must tell him where his future lies. ‘You need to find him. You need to deal with him. And I need to go back to Skein Island.’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘No. I need you here. I can stop him. I understand that I need to stop him. But I need you here, to help me. To be waiting for me, after I’ve done this thing. Please.’

  ‘I can’t. Don’t you understand? I can’t be the victim at the beginning and the prize at the end of your story. There are things I need to take care of. The island needs me. There’s nobody there to run it.’

  ‘So what? Let it stop.’ He holds me, strokes my back through my dress and it feels so good. ‘We’re finally getting through this, all of this.’

  ‘No, David, we’re not. Trust me. On the island, things happened to me. My mother showed me a woman. A monster.’ I try to explain it, as best as I can, and I appeal to his bravery, to his desire to solve the problem. I do this deliberately, and not without guilt.

  After I’ve finished, he says, ‘So you think I’m turning into a hero? A proper hero? Like in stories of old?’

  ‘You already are a hero in your own head. But I think that – if I don’t find a way to stop her – you’ll have no choice but to act like one all the time.’

  ‘So you’re trying to save me?’

  ‘Yes. Not just you. But mainly you.’

  He kisses me. ‘Thank you, but I really don’t need saving.’

  ‘We might have to agree to disagree on that.’

  ‘A few weeks ago I would have assumed you’re having a breakdown, you know that, right? But something happened to me while you were away.’

  ‘Something… with Sam?’

  He frowns, and says, ‘Sort of,’ and it hurts me so deeply that I can’t breathe. ‘She found me here, outside the library, waiting to kill him, that man who…’ He swallows, and continues, ‘I’d been in The Cornerhouse with Arnie, and they were playing a strange game. I had a… hallucination of some sort, and I was a hero in it, a knight, and there was a woman there, a… goddess. Like you described.’

  ‘A game?’

  ‘With four cubes, coloured cubes.’

  I have no idea how this can be, but I’m already sure of the answer as I ask him, ‘Were they red, blue, green and yellow?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  So I tell him every detail of my week on the island, and he tells me about cubes, and the game, and the liquid he drank before he had dreams of Moira. We swap information, trade notes, and by the time we finally lock up the library, I think I understand the world a lot better.

  We go home together, taking a slow walk, hand in hand. There is no reason to pretend that we can be together, no matter how much we might want that. We’re part of a pattern that must be played out. He will be the hero he was born to be, and I will attempt to find the monster from Skein Island.

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘I was certain someone would come,’ says Inger. ‘I have to say, I’m surprised it’s you.’

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I thought I’d be alone. I’m so glad I’m not. Can I come in?’

  The light shining from her cottage window had been the first good moment in a terrible day. Packing, saying goodbye to David, driving for hours in heavy traffic on the last Friday afternoon before Christmas, and then arriving at Allcombe and having to find a fisherman to take me over to the island as heavy drizzle blanketed the Bristol Channel: I had done all of these things, all the while thinking that an empty island would await me. I expected to sleep that night in my ancient threadbare sleeping bag from university. But in the shroud of late afternoon, the lights of the staff cottage
had sung out to me. I had no hesitation in making for it.

  Inger says, ‘Yes, come in, come in. I’m sorry, I’ve not seen many people for a while.’ She steps back and I enter. The heat hits me. It’s cosy inside, a tiny living space leading into a kitchen, much smaller than the guest bungalows. There’s a squashy white sofa, anglepoise lamps, and patchwork covers on the cushions. There is a pot-bellied stove in the hearth from which warmth is emanating at a ferocious rate. I put down my rucksack and strip off my coat, then my jumper.

  Inger closes the door, and says, ‘I don’t really understand anything that happened. You’re Mrs Makepeace’s daughter, have I got that right? So that means you must own this island now?’

  ‘Yes, I, um, own it. I’m sorry, do you think I could have a coffee?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ I follow her into the kitchen. She’s dressed in a grey tracksuit, her blonde hair scraped back. I watch her fill the kettle with water from the tap. ‘Nearly everyone left. There was no word about reopening, or getting paid…’

  ‘Do you have contact numbers for staff?’

  ‘They will be in the reception office. Why? Do you need to talk to them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say.

  Inger takes two mugs from an overhead cupboard and spoons in instant coffee. I can see she’s thinking hard. ‘I hope you decide to open the island again. I think it would be a good thing to do.’

  ‘Why did you stay? Even without pay?’

  ‘I was hoping that the island – what it stands for – could be salvaged. I’d like to help with that.’

  ‘Another thing that needs saving from drowning?’ I ask her. She smiles, and the kettle clicks off as the water boils for a furious few moments, then settles back down into stillness.

  * * *

  There are a hundred empty beds to choose from on this island, but I am glad to be on Inger’s sofa, listening to the crackle of the fire in the belly of the stove, feeling my body relax into sleep.

  Inger has put up no Christmas decorations, and that is another thing I am grateful for. It reinforces my belief that this island is separate from normality, kept free of the usual demands that life places upon us. It is suspended in salt solution, an embalmed island in time, and the fight to keep it preserved in this manner is about to begin.

  I wonder if David is alone in bed tonight. I hope so. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I want him to spend at least one night missing me before he turns back to Sam for comfort. For some reason I’m certain that he will; it was a promise in his face when he talked of her. There is unfinished business to be taken care of between them, I think.

  Since I’ve given up all rights to him, I shouldn’t mind. But I do. I do. So I allow myself to feel grief and guilt for a few minutes, safe in the knowledge that Inger won’t come down to ask what’s wrong, even if she hears me. She’s not that type of woman, not like Rebecca. Rebecca’s interest lay in examining problems, and Inger is interested in solving them single-handed. If she can’t do that, then she doesn’t want to acknowledge the problem in the first place.

  But who am I to criticise her, or Rebecca, after all the things I’ve done? I wallow in self-loathing for a moment, like a pig in mud, and then I tell myself that I no longer have the luxury of hating myself because I have to be better than that. I have so much to do, and I don’t even know where to begin.

  I am terrified. The basement will be excavated – I’ve paid a fortune for female workers to come here, claiming it’s in the spirit of the island, and I might find Moira waiting for me under the earth. If not, if she somehow escaped, as I suspect she did, then where do I look for her? How do I catch her when I know what she could do to me? She dismembers, she destroys. She is a monster.

  Perhaps it’s easier to be a man. If I’d been born a hero, I would have no doubts now. But I’m weak, and scared, and still a victim.

  But I’m also a survivor. It is a thought that comforts me and moves me towards sleep, further down, until I close my eyes and leave all the unanswerable questions until the morning.

  * * *

  ‘What are we looking for?’ says Inger.

  ‘Not sure. Invoices. Receipts. Letters. Personal documents. Anything.’

  I wish I was better at coming up with ideas. It was Inger who pointed out that maybe all the paperwork hadn’t been kept at the white house, and maybe we should look at our immediate surroundings. To do something manual, to throw around paper rather than merely ideas, is a relief, even if we’re only finding thank you notes from past visitors, and ferry timetables stretching back to 1978.

  ‘What’s in that one?’ I ask Inger. We are sitting cross-legged, facing each other, on the floor of the back office. A stack of documents from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet sits between us. She’s holding a vinyl ring folder that looks a lot more exciting than the weather print-outs from the Meteorological Office that I’m examining.

  ‘Receipts from the mainland for fresh fruit,’ she says. ‘I have a new understanding of how many pears we all ate last year.’ She puts down the folder and stretches, raising her arms above her head as she yawns. I catch her yawn, and return it. I’m tired too, even though it’s still early in the afternoon. But I’m not despondent. Even if we don’t find something here, a clue to help me understand this place better, we’ll find it in the remains of the white house, I’m sure. The excavation has been completed; nothing was found, apart from a few intact barrels of water and some lucky declarations that escaped destruction. The white house is now being rebuilt. The basement has been filled in with concrete.

  ‘Look,’ says Inger. She holds up a few sheets of yellow paper, stapled in the top left corner. ‘It was underneath the receipts. It doesn’t have a red file, but it looks complete.’

  It’s a declaration. I recognise that type of paper, and the letterhead. It should have been lost with the other hundreds, thousands, of declarations that Vanessa kept in the library. I can see the loops and lines of a neat, sure hand, setting out a life story in black.

  ‘What does it say?’

  Inger purses her lips, then reads aloud, ‘“I’m not going to give her a second helping. She takes all of my time and energy as it is. Instead I’m going to keep this all to myself. It’s the story of how I came here, and why I stayed. My very own—”’ She stops reading. ‘It’s a proper declaration. It’s private.’

  ‘It’s Vanessa’s declaration.’

  ‘Yes, I think so. The handwriting…’ Inger looks up at me with her steady eyes. ‘Do you think we should destroy it?’

  ‘Destroy it?’

  ‘Declarations weren’t written to be read.’

  That’s true. The authors never dreamed that their words would be read aloud in order to feed a monster, but that is what happened. And I know that, no matter what the reason behind my mother’s decision to record her past, she wouldn’t want me to read it. But I don’t really care whether she’d hate it or not.

  ‘Inger, would it bother you if I asked to keep that?’

  ‘Are you going to read it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? What do you think you’ll learn?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I feel tempted to lie, to say I’m hoping to gain some sort of empathetic and wonderful insight into my mother’s choices, but I suspect Inger will see through such bullshit. So instead I tell her, ‘I already know why she abandoned me, and that she thought it was the right choice. I suppose I just want to own something that was personal to her. To feel I have a right to it. I already have her money and the island. Now I want a little bit of her voice.’

  Inger considers this, and nods. ‘That makes sense,’ she says. She folds the paper once and gives it to me. ‘Do you want to read it now? Shall I give you some time?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll do it tonight.’

  ‘All right. Tonight.’

  So we spend the rest of the day sorting through a history of bungalow allocations and staff holiday requests and coastguard reports, and I feel like I’m on
the edge of a precipice, teetering, toeing the chalky, ragged drop into a cold, blue sea below.

  * * *

  The day is done; the night is here. How strange time has become to me. It is disjointed, unconnected to the slow sweeps of the hands of the clock. I could almost believe that I am not aging at all.

  The dim light of Inger’s anglepoise is casting a circle over the sofa, where I lie in my sleeping bag, with my mother’s declaration in my hands.

  Outside, all is calm, still and cloudless, the iciest of nights. In the morning all will be frozen, but in here the stove gives out glad heat and the spicy, warming smell of burning wood. Inger has gone to bed, and the moment has come.

  I lift the declaration and read:

  I’m not going to give her a second helping. She takes all of my time and energy as it is. Instead I’m going to keep this all to myself. It’s the story of how I came here, and why I stayed. My very own declaration. Not like the first one, when I came to the island for my week away from the world, and wrote about how my husband and my daughter failed to appreciate me. That was how I felt back then, no matter whether it was true or not. Doesn’t everyone fail to appreciate everyone, after all? But I had my predictable moans to get off my chest, and that’s what I did.

  Predictability – that’s a terrible way to live. In all the years that have passed since my arrival, I never woke up knowing exactly what was going to happen.

  Perhaps I always craved an element of danger, but I don’t remember being an adventurous child. I liked dolls and cuddly bears, and I kept all my toys throughout my teenage years, right into marriage. I only got rid of them once Marianne came along. I wanted everything that belonged to her to be brand new.

  When I applied for Skein Island I never thought I’d get a place, so when the acceptance came through, I decided to go immediately, before my nerve deserted me. It was going to be my personal adventure, probably the only one I ever experienced. I was ready to have my week of self-discovery, and then return home forever more. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for something more than that. In retrospect, what was I expecting to happen? On an island in the Bristol Channel with no men, I harboured some overblown romantic fantasies. I think one involved a dashing pirate kidnapping me on the beach. Too much Daphne du Maurier is to blame for that. Of course, as soon as I saw the beach I realised how ridiculous that idea had been. Not only were there no pirates off the coast of North Devon, but the beach was a small patch of grey shingle strewn with smelly seaweed – hardly the golden stretch I had envisaged.