She placed her right hand on the rock face, her left on the rough wall of the building. Reluctantly, she dipped her head into the gap.
The scuffling sound was amplified within the narrow passage.
Nina took a breath and eased herself fully into the gap.
But as the sound grew, so did a strong sense of the wrongness of all of this.
That sound.
It was too light, too flimsy.
The thought of pushing further into the gap was suddenly unimaginable.
‘Please,’ she said, but got no further, because the skittering sound grew louder and wilder. Something brushed against her stomach, tugging at the fabric of her T-shirt.
The need to retreat became overwhelming. She toppled backwards awkwardly, not trapped within the narrow gap but unable to turn. The loose rocks beneath her feet prevented her from launching herself away effectively, so that when some tiny, frenzied thing emerged from the depths of the darkness, batting against her forearms as she struggled to protect herself, she could do nothing other than continue to fall backwards.
Then she was on the ground, her already aching neck now singing with pain. She held her arms crossed before her face as something small and unpredictable flashed down. It nipped at her forearms then snuck past them to fling itself at her face. She gasped but didn’t cry out as some hard, sharp part of it dragged across her throat, a clean vector on her skin that she visualised as a line of bright light rather than an injury. The creature’s crackling flurry was as loud and calamitous as a cresting tidal wave.
It flittered upwards, puncturing the strip of moonlight – a panicked, skittering thing. A bird.
* * *
Tammy and Abram’s house – that is to say, Rob’s childhood home – was not as Nina had expected. She had seen photos over the years and had dismissed the white porch and its white trellis as outdated Americana, envisaging Tammy and Abram sitting before their vast homestead, glaring at their neighbours. But Cat’s Ear Cottage really was a cottage, reminiscent of the small homes on the Scottish islands Nina had visited, albeit with red cladding as opposed to slate or stone. The view from the porch was not of a neighbourhood but the endless Gulf of Maine dotted with tiny hillocks of islands nearer to the mainland. The moonlight skidded on the surface of the water, delineating the stark horizon and making Nina’s breath catch at its geometric beauty.
She dallied on the porch after the others had entered the house, scanning along the rough dirt track, wondering about the girl on the harbour road. After her absurd encounter with the bird, Nina had forced herself to return to the gap between the building and the hillside, but it had been empty – the girl must have wriggled around two walls to evade her. She was probably at home now, sniggering about having fooled some clueless Brit.
When Nina had returned to the car it was clear that not only had her passengers failed to see the girl when she had been on the road, they hadn’t seen or heard anything that had happened afterwards, either.
Laurie emerged from the cottage and tugged her arm, pulling her indoors. ‘Come inside, Mum. It’s cold out here.’
If the exterior of the house had surprised Nina with its simplicity, the interior had the opposite effect. Behind the low, brown leather furniture the walls of the wood-panelled sitting room were crammed with framed photos of Tammy and Abram on their travels. They stood before geysers and campervans and restaurants; they wore sunglasses, garish floral patterns, hats with slogans. The images were selfies from a time before selfies, reliant upon Tammy asking passers-by to operate her camera. Nina tracked the images from right to left, travelling backwards in time. Tammy’s outfits became progressively less enveloping, her skin less pale. Her hair its usual dyed caramel, then dazzling white, then merely peppered with bright flecks, then her original dark blond. Abram grew in stature, his back straightening and his creases flattening, until he stood a head taller than his wife and his eyes became Rob’s eyes, shining and laughing.
The papery Abram of today emerged from the dining room and gazed up at the photos with polite interest.
‘You’re sure you’re not hurt too badly?’ Nina said. Now the wound on his forehead looked more like a bindi or a dab of paint.
Abram turned both of his palms upwards and frowned at them. ‘Never better. It’s wonderful that you can be here, Emma.’
They had known each other for almost fifteen years.
‘Actually, that isn’t—’
Laurie yanked at her elbow again. ‘Hey, Mum. You should see your room.’
Nina frowned at Abram but then allowed herself to be led back into the hallway. She turned towards the staircase.
Laurie shook her head. ‘No, you’re downstairs. Gran calls it the den. You’ll laugh when you see it.’ She pushed open a door.
Nina didn’t laugh.
This room, too, was wood-panelled and had its walls filled with photos. But these photos were all of Rob. Here was Rob as an infant in pictures arranged alongside the den’s built-in cupboard with its slatted double doors; Rob as a child aging incrementally along a wall otherwise interrupted only by a flat-screen TV and a dartboard; Rob as a lumbering teen; and then recognisably her Rob, his laughter lines already established as his likenesses edged closer and closer to the doorway in which Nina stood. She missed him suddenly. She had an urge to slip her arms around the waist of any of the men in these pictures. Surely she had a claim over some of them? She searched for a picture of herself but found none. Judging from this display, Rob’s life had ended around the time that he and Nina had first met. Perhaps they ought to have got married, if only so that the wedding might have warranted a single framed photo somewhere in Tammy and Abram’s house.
Laurie skipped to the centre of the room, to the foot of the futon that took up most of it. She had become herself again: a fourteen-year-old as opposed to the surly late-teen she had playacted on the journey.
‘Hi Dad,’ she said as she whirled around, looking up at the photos.
‘I can’t sleep in here,’ Nina said without thinking.
Laurie stopped spinning. She tilted her head. ‘No? All right. I will, then. You can sleep up in the box room between Gran and Grumps.’
Nina shivered. It was difficult to decide which was the less appealing repercussion of switching rooms: the idea of trying to sleep surrounded by Tammy and Abram in their respective bedrooms, or the thought of Laurie sleeping down here, watched over by Rob.
‘No,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll be fine down here. It’s cosy.’
‘You’re the boss.’
Nina watched her daughter carefully. That was what Reeta and Laine and the rest of her newsroom team said when they disagreed with her instructions: You’re the boss. She had told herself that with Laurie she could shed her authoritarian stance. Being on Hope Island was supposed to be an escape from all that. A new start.
It was important that Laurie felt friendly towards her, before Nina broke the news.
She flinched as something bumped against her arm.
Tammy held a tray of cookies. She peered into the den. ‘Bobby said he was coming. Not that I’m complaining, of course. It’s always a blessing having Laurie stay with us. No matter the circumstances.’
Nina took a breath before beginning her rehearsed excuse. ‘I’m sorry it’s come as a surprise. Rob had already booked the plane tickets to come here, and it would have been a waste not to use them.’