Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Epilogue
- Author’s note
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
‘Don’t close yourself off from it,’ Cathy said, later still, as Anna lay beneath his blankets on the sofa in the darkness with her phone to her ear.
‘I have to.’
‘Why?’
Anna gave a short burst of laughter that had nothing to do with mirth. Cathy was the only one to whom she had confessed her new secret – that Taymar Zetelli had offered her a job as head chef at her next restaurant, which would be opening in Newcastle the following year. Taymar hadn’t been fazed at all by Anna’s pregnancy. The same couldn’t be said for the owner of the only restaurant within driving distance of Crovie that had been looking for a chef. He had directed a pointed look at her stomach before telling her that the position had miraculously been filled overnight.
‘How can I stay?’ Anna said. ‘It was impractical before. Now it would be plain crazy, wouldn’t it?’
There was a pause. ‘I want you to have the career you deserve. I really do,’ Cathy said. ‘You’re so talented and you love the kitchen. But I also want you to have a life. A family. Love. If you take Zetelli’s offer you’ll have to leave Robert MacKenzie behind, and I don’t think—’
Anna cut her off. ‘He hasn’t – this isn’t – there hasn’t been time for any of that. There isn’t time for any of that.’
‘But you know. Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Anna said, ‘except that the only home I can call my own is in the village where nothing else may have been left standing, and I’ve been thrown a lifeline to start again elsewhere.’
Selkie lass,
I can’t lose something that never was, and yet…
I lie awake at night and wonder how you would explain it, if you were the one telling, and Robbie was the one listening. I think you’d tell him that life is like the sea, with its own tides. I think you’d say that the tide takes things out, as well as bringing things in, and that life is like that too.
I tell myself that if she leaves – and how can she not, now? – that it’s only the tide turning again. I tell myself that I’m not losing a thing, because a person can’t be so lucky twice in a lifetime.
There cannot possibly be enough love in the world for that.