CMR

9

SEAGULL

Larus canus

Emily wanted so badly to go home, to have it all return to how it once was. Her week used to be shaped by a long-practiced routine, not least waiting for the sound of milk bottles being left on the doorstep and post sliding through the letter box. The whistle of kettle, the clunk of cupboard, and the ting of spoon as her grandmother stirred her morning cup of tea.

Now she was on a ferry, headed for France. Utterly terrified. Trapped between two worlds, neither of which she really wanted to be a part of.

Last night she had feigned tiredness, asked to go to her room, only to sit up rereading her grandmother’s diary and flicking through her sketchbook, seeing if there was anything from before to give her an idea as to what the final story could be about. If she could somehow figure it out, there would be no need to travel any further. Trapped within the fold were a few crumbs from the biscuits that were her everyday staple, which she would usually toss outside for Milton and his friends. It had made her sad to think of them there, without her, and she could not remember when at last she fell asleep, with curtains wide open so that dawn would wake her.

There had been no time to think about, to truly process, what it was she had been asked to do.

“Are you drawing me?” Tyler opened one eye to accuse her, then dropped his head back against the seat.

“In a way,” Emily replied, the words coming out more easily because he wasn’t watching. Her sketchbook was still inside the front pocket of her suitcase. She hadn’t been able to draw anything since leaving home. Something was stopping her, but she wasn’t yet sure what it could be. So instead she had been watching, storing up all the images she wanted to collect for later, when she was ready to start again.

The space around him blurred as she assessed every part of his face. As always, the real world slipped away as she gave in to the images forming inside her head.

What would life have dealt her instead if that one day had been different?

It was an impossible question to answer; one Emily had tried, unsuccessfully, not to think about. But now she found herself also considering what could have been for her grandmother, if she had stayed in Scotland, done what was expected of her, instead of traveling across this same stretch of sea, long before it was commonplace to do so, before women were given such freedoms as to be able to live alone in a bookstore in Paris.

Is that why you chose him? Emily thought as she watched Tyler sleep. Because he somehow reminded her grandmother of Noah?

Noah. It was the name of a man she had never heard her grandmother mention. He was clearly someone who had made a remarkable impression on a young Catriona, along with the four other people mentioned in her diary. But Emily only knew who two of them were.