Coming Home to Winter Island

by Jo Thomas

  ‘I think,’ I say slowly, ‘it really is time Joe got a dream of his own.’ I gaze out at the snowflakes falling. ‘But that’s for him to find out.’ I look back at Jess, my oldest friend, and the others. ‘It’s so good to see you!’ I say, enveloping them in a group hug. ‘It means everything to me that you’ve come!’

  But as I hug them, I see they’re not alone. ‘Mum?!’ I say, looking over Jess’s shoulder. My mum is standing there, case by her side, looking around like she’s stepped out of the Tardis and gone back in time. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Came to see you, darling!’

  ‘More likely you could sniff out the gin!’ I laugh, and so does she. It feels so good hearing her laugh.

  ‘Well, this place certainly hasn’t changed! Certainly not for the better . . . If anything, it looks like the land that time forgot. Can’t imagine why you’ve got yourself stuck here. I came to see if it really was as I remembered. And to check on you, of course!’

  She turns back to me and she too pulls off her sunglasses. What is it with people from the city and sunglasses? I think. You don’t get to take in half as much if you’re always wearing shades.

  ‘Well, are we just going to stand on the doorstep? This cold will do my voice no good, you know, and I have a cruise show in a week’s time! I say a show; actually they want me to run karaoke night, but they’ll want me to perform, they always do!’ She steps past Jess, balancing her big sunglasses on top of her solid black curly hair, hairsprayed to within an inch of its life, and kisses me lightly on both cheeks, the hairspray catching in the back of my throat and making me cough.

  ‘You should have come to stay with me. You could have come to me on the ship, or we could’ve stayed with friends in Spain. I’d’ve done yoga with you on the beach, taken you through your exercises. What’s Tenerife got that a few weeks with your own mother wouldn’t have solved? In fact, it’s given me an idea about setting up a singing centre of my own. Just need to find the backing!’ She steps into the hall, clutching her huge handbag over her coat and a sparkly shawl on top of that.

  Jess follows, stamping her feet and blowing into her hands, as do the rest of the band.

  ‘We were going to stop and have something to eat at the café, but it was full of a party from an old people’s home that came over on the ferry with us.’

  Island View! My heart skips a beat. They came! Somebody at least came!

  ‘Well, look, as you’re here,’ I say, ‘there are rooms made up upstairs. We had guests the other night, when there was a big storm. Burns Night, when we piped in the haggis. Dreadful weather. Great night. The weather here can change four times in a day! But it helped fill the mountain spring, where the water for the gin comes from, filtered over some of the oldest rock on the planet.’

  Jess, the band and my mum all look at me.

  ‘What?’ says Moira.

  ‘Definitely got under your skin!’ my mum and Jess say together.

  ‘Definitely time you came home,’ adds Jess.

  ‘Come in.’ I manage to smile. ‘The fire’s lit. Just going to do the one here in the hall. And now that you’re here, I could really do with a hand. My cleaning help has . . . gone down with something. Actually, she’s . . .’ I hear my voice start to crack, and I falter.

  ‘What?’ says my mum, concerned.

  Jess puts her arm around me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re coming. I don’t think anyone’s coming. They think I’ve let them down.’

  ‘Oh, now if I know anything about this island, it’ll all be a storm in a teacup,’ says my mum. ‘We’ll pitch in. Get this place sorted in no time. It’ll be fun!’ She smiles, making me smile too. She may not have been the most dependable of parents, but she did used to make things fun, and I know she loves me. ‘Let’s get the radio on and get this party started!’ She looks around. ‘Might even feel like old times.’

  I follow her gaze. It’s as if she’s drinking in the memories.

  ‘Mum, why have I never been here before?’

  ‘Well, once your dad fell out with his father, that was it. Hector told him if he left to never return. He was dead to him. I don’t think he meant it, but the two of them . . .’

  ‘. . . locked horns?’

  She looks at me. ‘Exactly. And never spoke again. Your dad did plan to bring you here for a visit. But after he died, there didn’t seem any reason for me to make contact. You were happy enough. We had our own life. And then we just lost any chance of getting back in contact.’

  I nod. I suppose you can only do the best you can in the moment. Regrets won’t help. It’s living in the now that matters. And right now, I have had the chance to meet Hector, and that seems very special.

  ‘Oh, Hector. Come and say hello.’ I guide them down the hall.

  ‘He’s here?’ says my mum, suddenly apprehensive.

  ‘Of course. Although he may not actually know who you are. But he’d love to say hello, I’m sure. Come on in. Hector, we have guests.’

  ‘Guests? Is it them? Are they here?’ He goes to stand from the wheelchair that he’s taken to using without complaint over the past few days. ‘Is it Campbell and the baby?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’m sure they’ll be here soon, though.’ I put a steadying hand on his shoulder. ‘These are friends, here for the tea party.’

  ‘Oh, right, smashing. Will we have a nip, Mairead?’

  ‘Who’s Mairead?’ Jess whispers in my ear.

  ‘His wife,’ I whisper back.

  ‘What, your grandmother? Ew!’

  ‘Sometimes I’m Mairead, sometimes I’m his personal assistant, Miss Rubes,’ I say with a fond smile.

  ‘But never Ruby?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘He can’t seem to remember that part yet. Thinks I’m still a baby.’

  ‘Hello, Hector,’ says my mum, putting out a hand. Suddenly all her loud, brash ways seem to have left her. ‘We met a long time ago.’

  ‘Did we?’ He looks at her with no recognition whatsoever in his frail face. He’s lost weight since I got here, despite Lachlan’s fabulous cooking. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. The memory’s not quite what it used to be.’ He looks out of the window, his mind wandering, and starts to hum gently to himself.

  ‘Seems like all the sad memories have been left in the past,’ Mum says. ‘That’s not a bad place to be in life.’ She looks at him. ‘I took his son away, and with that, his chance of family life here on the island. I didn’t mean to. I just . . . we just fell in love. But it wasn’t meant to be.’

  ‘You mean you got bored,’ I say, and wish I hadn’t, but she just nods sadly.

  ‘I wish your dad could have made it up with his family.’

  ‘Maybe they were about to. Hector seems to think that Dad and the baby were about to visit the island. He’s living in hope,’ I say.

  ‘Again, not a bad place to be. We should all live in hope.’ She smiles. ‘Right, let’s get this place ready for a tea party, shall we?’

  ‘Oh, and here comes Lachlan,’ I say, watching him walking across from the distillery with bottles in his arms.

  ‘Who’s Lachlan?!’ asks my mum and Jess and the rest of the band at the same time, their eyes widening.

  For some unknown reason, I find myself blushing.

  ‘Lachlan, oh he’s—’

  ‘He’s Miss Rubes’ man,’ says Hector, suddenly stirring. ‘She’s having his baby, you know!’

  ‘So let me get this right,’ says my mum, holding her hands round a cup of tea, laced with something stronger, I suspect, and leaning against the old range to warm her behind. ‘You’re Miss Rubes . . . but you’re not having a baby.’

  ‘No.’ Lachlan and I both laugh, and my insides flip at the memory of the kiss on Burns Night.

  ‘So you two aren’t . . .’ Jess p
oints between us.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Good God, no!’ says Lachlan at the same time. ‘We can barely stand the sight of each other!’ He smiles at me and I tingle all over. ‘And, um, there was no one else on the ferry?’ he asks. ‘Just you guys and the care home party?’

  ‘That’s it,’ says Jess. ‘I mean, who else would be mad enough?’

  Lachlan and I look at her.

  ‘What? I mean, it’s not . . .’

  ‘Tenerife?’ says Lachlan, with a smile in the corner of his mouth. And I wonder who else Lachlan was expecting?

  I think about all the effort he’s put in to get to today, finding the ingredients, making batch after batch of gin until it’s just like we remember it from that Christmas Day on the beach and again last night, when everything was, well, just perfect. Every time I shut my eyes I can taste it. It’s a taste I will take with me when I leave. And every time I think of it, I’ll be able to see the island as clearly as if I was back here. I swallow, wondering how it’ll feel to be back in my own bed, back in my own little flat, closing my eyes and tasting and seeing the island in my head.

  ‘Right, let’s crack on,’ says Lachlan. ‘Let’s make this the best tea party we can . . . whoever turns up. Let’s do it for Hector. Jess, you help Ruby. And . . . Stella, is it? You can help me.’ My mum beams. ‘The rest of you, follow me.’

  ‘We’ll get Hector holding the bag of drawing pins when we put the bunting up,’ I tell Jess, who is looking at me totally bemused.

  ‘Ruby? What’s going on?’ she says as she follows me into the dining room.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You, this place . . .’ she nods her head, ‘Lachlan!’

  ‘Oh, there’s nothing going on with Lachlan.’ My mouth is dry, and I realise that more than anything I’d love to say there was something going on with him, but even if he is feeling the attraction like I am – and judging by the way he looked at me last night when he gave me the bottle of gin, I think he is – we both know nothing can come of it. We’ll be leaving the island after today.

  ‘So now that it looks like you don’t need to go to Tenerife, we can get straight back to gigging. There’s plenty booked in for the band, especially after the big gig yesterday. Loads of interest! And I’ve had a call asking if you’re available for saloon singing sessions. They have lots of slots if you want them. And . . . the big news!’ She claps her hands together. ‘I finally got hold of the A&R woman. She said she’d try and see us again. So with you sounding so great, the sooner we get back out there, the sooner we could get seen.’

  We’re draping bunting between the curtain poles, Jess holding it, me reaching and draping.

  ‘That’s great news!’ I say.

  ‘So you’ll come back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, if all goes according to plan today, the house and the gin business will be sold and Hector will move into the care home. There’ll be no reason for me to be here after that,’ I say, whilst my heart says otherwise. Because I love it here, and because Lachlan is still here!

  ‘This is some house.’ Jess looks around. ‘It’ll probably be turned into a boutique hotel, with a Michelin-starred chef and its own distillery.’

  ‘It is beautiful, isn’t it?’ I look out across the bay as the snowflakes fall like glitter and wonder if the seals are out, and whether they’ll appear for the guests when Lachlan walks them down there.

  ‘It’s got to be worth a bit, what with the gin business as well. Even with paying for Hector’s care home, there’ll be quite a pot of money once you’ve sold it. You know, it would pay for us to take the band on tour. A European tour, do the festivals, really get our name out there.’

  ‘Jess!’

  ‘What? I’m just saying. If and when anything happens to the old . . . to Hector, you’ll be in line for whatever’s left, being the next of kin and all that.’

  I shake my head. I don’t even want to think about it. ‘There’s no way I’m financing a European tour with Hector’s money!’

  Jess shrugs. ‘I’m just saying think about it. I bet he’d want you to do something with the money.’

  ‘Well, he’s doing just fine and that’s not going to be an option.’

  Jess shrugs again and Hector coughs from the other room.

  ‘Come on, Hector. Come and hold this bag of drawing pins for me,’ I call. Right now, Hector not being around is the last thing I want to think about. I’ve only just found him, and I feel I’m only just finding me too. I don’t want that to stop.

  ‘We’ll put some music on,’ I say, and climb down from the chair. It’ll put us all in the right mood. This is supposed to be a celebration, after all.

  Chapter Forty-three

  By five to three, the house is looking amazing. My mum is pulling off rubber gloves, and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s ever come into contact with a loo brush.

  ‘That Lachlan! He’s a hard taskmaster!’ she says, tossing the gloves into a cleaning bucket that Lachlan picks up and puts in the scullery. She shakes out her hair. It still doesn’t move.

  ‘Right, time for a drink, everyone,’ Lachlan says, pouring gin into glasses on a tray and carrying it into the living room where Hector and the others are.

  ‘Ah, Miss Rubes!’ Hector says, but he doesn’t stand as he usually does. He may have been asleep.

  The rest of us gather around the roaring fire where he’s sitting. The dogs are dozing in front of it. The crackle from the logs is the only sound other than the tick of the clock. Slowly, very slowly, the big hand eases its way around to three o’clock. And as it hits the hour with a chime, I hold my breath.

  The bell at the front door rings, making me jump, as usual. Hector looks up.

  ‘Visitors. Lovely,’ he says with a smile that seems to take all his energy.

  ‘Show time,’ says my mum. ‘Just like the old days.’

  Chapter Forty-four

  The dining room is buzzing. The whole of the island seems to have turned out, along with the residents from the care home, Fraser and his extended family and Jack Drummond and his business partners. The visitors have been on a tour of the distillery, and those that could manage it have taken a walk to see the seals. Lachlan has shown them a glimpse of the places we’ve gathered the botanicals from, the ingredients that give the gin its taste of wild and rugged island life. Now a record is playing, and everyone is enjoying the tea, having a really fun time by the looks of it.

  ‘All okay?’ I hear Lachlan’s voice behind me, making my nerve endings stand to attention.

  I nod. ‘You?’ I ask.

  ‘Uh huh.’ He’s not looking at me but gazing out of the window across the lawn, as if he’s looking for someone. ‘Seems to be going well,’ he says. Isla is glancing over at him anxiously, and I have no idea what’s going on between them. I thought they’d sorted things out. Moved on. It would break Gordan’s heart if anything were to happen between them. Not to mention what it would do to mine.

  I look at my mum, who’s holding a teapot and looking out of the big French doors along the back wall of the wood-panelled dining room.

  ‘You okay, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, darling. Just . . . you know, being back here. Makes me remember how I felt when I first fell in love with your dad. And sad, too, looking back at how things turned out. I should never have let it happen. I didn’t think about the consequences for him. Just took what I wanted at the time.’

  ‘It all makes sense now, though.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Dad. His funny ways. He’s just like Hector. I can see now that he longed to be back here, as if he’d left a part of him behind.’

  Mum smiles and puts her spare arm around me, hugging me.

  ‘Your dad loved it here. Always did. That’s why it brok
e his heart to leave. He should have come back. I told him to. But he was too stubborn, just like Hector. Once they’ve decided on something, they stick to it and make sure it happens. Like someone else I know.’ She smiles at me and looks around the room. White tablecloths that I found in a suitcase cover every table we have in the place. ‘I’m really proud of you,’ she says, tears filling her made-up eyes.

  ‘I’m glad you came, Mum.’

  ‘So am I,’ she says. ‘Maybe I’m finally growing up. Maybe it’s time I stopped chasing the next exciting adventure, settled down a bit.’ She looks around the room. ‘You know, this place, with work . . . you could sell it on when Hector, y’know . . .’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘I’m just saying. Then you could come into business with me. We could set up a yoga retreat in Spain. Work together. Mother and daughter. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you’d probably get bored of the idea and want to move on after about six months!’ I smile affectionately at her. ‘Besides, this house isn’t mine and isn’t ever going to be. It needs to be sold,’ I swallow, ‘to pay for Hector’s care home. And soon.’ I look over at Flora, who is cutting up a scone for one of the old ladies, her napkin tucked into her front.

  ‘We’re neither of us getting any younger, and the music industry is so brutal these days,’ my mum says.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m just going to put on a different record,’ I say, glad of the excuse to get away as the speaker begins to crackle. I look around for Lachlan. I should do my singing spot really. He did promise them. We need to crack on before it’s time for the ferry to leave.

  ‘Lachlan, I think I should sing now,’ I tell him.

  ‘Soon, soon,’ he says, and I have no idea why he’s suddenly so reluctant. He moves away, offering refills of gin to the guests and passing on the information he’s learnt from Hector. ‘Gin and tonic was developed to prevent malaria,’ I hear him saying. Let’s hope that by the end of the tea party we’ve got a few more orders to meet our crowdfunding target, and can get the bottles sent out to those who have pledged money. Not that I’ll be here by then, I think with a pang.