Nina nodded. As the shopkeeper busied herself by ineffectually reordering the mess on the counter, Nina glanced at each of the woman’s ears in turn, looking for any sign of a hearing aid. Nobody had any reason to shout like that in normal conversation. ‘We’re here for a bit of a break.’
Mrs Rasmussen raised her head. She squinted at Nina. ‘What’s that? You English are so shy and retiring. Don’t know why. You don’t look a bit like Laurie. You sure you’re not stealing her away? You’re not some kind of a nut?’ She cackled, a sound so sharp and loud that Nina actually covered her ears.
Nina’s heart leapt when Laurie rolled her eyes, a response clearly at the expense of the shopkeeper. Nina couldn’t remember the last time she had shared a private joke with her daughter.
‘So, hey, Laurie,’ she said. ‘Want to pick some candy? Anything you like.’
‘Anything?’
‘Sure.’
As Laurie moved up and down an aisle crammed with confectionery, Nina made a show of looking around, mainly to avoid eye contact with the shopkeeper, who continued muttering to herself about her sister’s rodent problem and her assumptions about predators luring children with candy. She clicked on a portable radio balanced precariously on top of the till, then cranked it to maximum volume. The words that came from it were barely discernible in a sea of static, pops and something like whale calls.
Nina had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘Do you have today’s newspapers?’
‘No.’
‘A recent one, then?’
Mrs Rasmussen only shrugged. She bent to put her ear closer to the radio speaker.
‘I could tune that in a bit better if you want,’ Nina said, miming turning the frequency dial.
‘You some kind of an expert?’
‘Sort of. I mean, you don’t need to be an expert to—’
‘I like it like this.’
Laurie returned with her crooked arm laden with colourfully wrapped sweets. ‘I couldn’t decide.’
‘That’s fine,’ Nina said. Then, to Mrs Rasmussen, ‘That’s all, thanks.’
The shopkeeper took an age to note down the prices of all the sweets, returning to the confectionery aisle twice to consult handwritten signs, and then in the end Nina had to calculate the total for her. By the time they exited the shop Nina’s head was ringing from static and anxiety. Laurie had already unwrapped and begun munching a wilting, yellow-and-pink-striped stick.
Nina pointed along the uphill track. ‘Perhaps we should head on back—’
She stopped as she spotted a figure silhouetted on the hillside overlooking the harbour, her face obscured by her hair whipping in the breeze. She couldn’t tell if it was the same girl from last night.
‘Laurie, do you know—’
But when she looked back, the girl was gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Keep following this road,’ Tammy said in her flat, loud voice. She was gripping the handle of the car door with both hands in what Nina assumed was an implied criticism of her ability to control the Chrysler.
Nina obeyed. In the central rear-view mirror she saw Laurie pop in her earphones, humming as she watched the view out of the window. Abram had stayed at home, and with the entirety of the rear of the car at her disposal Laurie had somehow found a way of sitting sideways, her legs sprawled across the back seat, whilst keeping her seat belt on.
‘Where are we going?’ Nina asked.
‘You looked a little lost when you showed up at the house this morning,’ Tammy replied.
‘No, only thoughtful.’ It took Nina a few moments to decipher the implications. There were numerous possible reasons for Tammy bearing a grudge against her, but Rob shacking up with an atheist presumably rankled – surely there was no mistaking Nina as anything other than a godless liberal? And of course, she and Rob had never married, though he had offered twice.
‘Listen, Tammy,’ Nina said, ‘I’m as interested as anyone in traditions and all that. But if you’re taking us to your church then I really—’
‘Watch out,’ Tammy said. ‘The road dips away sharply.’
Within seconds, the combination of the steep incline and the still-unfamiliar stick shift (hadn’t all American cars become automatics long ago?) meant that Nina had to focus all her attention on wrestling with the heavy car.
‘Follow the bends.’
Nina grimaced. What else could she possibly do? Eventually she got the measure of the sweeping curves of the road, and she allowed the car to coast around each bend. The road was wide enough that the bulky bonnet of the car, as it swung around, wouldn’t impede oncoming traffic – not that there was any traffic anyway.
As the road straightened, she allowed her gaze to rise from the asphalt.
They were fast approaching the northern tip of the crescent-shaped island. The land ahead tapered away almost to nothing, but then became a lumpy mass. It looked as if the island was a claw, tapping at the outcrop upon which stood a thin white lighthouse. Even from this distance Nina could see that it was in bad shape. Stains marked its walls and paint had flaked away to produce grey staircase-like patterns. A glinting, ragged outline on the curved window of the lantern room suggested the glass was smashed.
‘The Sanctuary,’ Tammy said loudly, startling Nina.
Nina frowned. ‘That lighthouse?’
‘This whole place.’ Tammy drew a shape in the air.
Nina swung the car around another bend, then leant forwards to see what Tammy indicated. The entire northern coast of the island was enclosed within a tall wooden fence, the type one might normally expect to see on a construction site. Most of the land within the enclosure was meadow, with the odd large rock poking up from the green expanse. A collection of buildings stood in the centre of the enclosure, far away from the lighthouse. By far the largest and grandest of these buildings was a blunt-faced mansion with a dozen or more windows and, in the middle of its wide roof, a snub tower that appeared rather like a dovecote. It looked like it might once have been a fancy hotel, though it was now decidedly unkempt; long grass reached halfway up the windows of its ground floor. Dotted around in the shadow of the mansion were a church with a thin spire and a handful of oblong cabins positioned at odd angles, as though they had been tossed carelessly from above.
‘Technically, it’s only the mansion that’s named the Sanctuary. And it’s prettier from the other side,’ Tammy almost yelled over the struggling engine. ‘It’s all about the sea view.’
‘I think I know what this is,’ Nina said slowly. ‘Rob mentioned it once, and I looked it up online. Wasn’t there some sort of artists’ colony on the island?’
‘There sure was. It’s been through a few proprietors since then. Seen better days.’
‘So what is it now?’
‘The Sanctuary. And don’t we all need sanctuary sometimes.’ It wasn’t a question.
Nina decided to hold her tongue. It wasn’t hard to see what might have drawn artists to stay here in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, back when being an artist was a legitimate occupation, at least among the privileged classes. From the upper windows the view over the ocean must be incredible. Nina caught glimpses of a lawn stretching from the far side of the building, where she imagined painters working at their easels. She thought of Laurie’s cubbyhole, the Crow’s Nest: her daughter’s own method of blocking out the world and focusing only on the unending water. She shivered and shut off the car’s fans.