Tom breathed in deeply, inhaling the freshness of salt. He had a clear memory of leaving the island the last time, tightening his hands on the cold rail as he stood beside Heather and thinking, furiously, that he would never return. Or he thought he remembered this moment, but what, in the end, could be relied on? Many of his memories he knew he must have changed or embellished, as everyone did: drawing our fragments together into a pattern that made sense, telling ourselves the story of our lives.

Malcolm’s figure was growing smaller now, the shoreline blurring, replaced all around by open water. Tom watched the gannets flying back and forth on to the black rocks further from shore. The islanders had never been awed by the sea, though it defined the limits of their existence. But they had always turned away from it, looked inland. Perhaps this wasn’t weakness after all but defiance.

As the sky started to clear, Tom leaned on the rail and stared out at the water churned up in a white trail behind them. A moment later, the sun came out, turning the sea a rich, deep blue. He could no longer see Malcolm, but he could just about make out the landscape of Litta, its ragged moorland rising up in crests and ridges, its cliffs leaning over the sea. The island was receding fast now, its terrible beauty fading. A few moments more and it would vanish completely. As he watched it go, Tom was not surprised to feel Nicky beside him again, and then his mother, with Beth in her arms. They were mute, his companions, watchful and patient. He didn’t know them well, not at this distance of so many years, hardly knew them at all in truth, but they remained with him. Quiet strangers. He no longer wished to chase them away. Oh my ghosts, he thought. My lovely ghosts. Come with me; we’ll try Glasgow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Wait is the author of critically acclaimed novels The View on the Way Down (2013) and The Followers (2017). She writes and teaches in London.