Page 13 of One Night on the Island

Eat a meal you’ve foraged yourself.

Make a life-changing decision.

Sleep outdoors.

I strike that one off the list. I hadn’t taken the inclement weather into account.

Write a poem, or maybe a song.

Make something with your hands.

The self-coupling ceremony.

I pause, tapping my finger lightly against the words. It’s still a work in progress, a brain-sketch more than a solid plan. The ceremony will be on my birthday because I want to do something to mark the day I turn thirty, a symbolic celebration of me. Ali is insistent on billing it as ‘marrying myself’ because it’s headline grabbing, hence the ironic honeymoon booking. I prefer to think of it as a self-commitment ceremony, a pause to acknowledge that I’m secure in who I am as a single woman. A champagne send-off for my twenties; a welcome in to my thirties. I bought a balsa wood bowl off eBay with unformed ideas of putting things in it and floating it out to sea. Or setting fire to it on the beach. I don’t really know yet, I’m still thinking about it. My eyes scan back up the list and pause on ‘Make a life-changing decision’. Ali didn’t see that one; I added it after I’d left London. It’s something I’m mulling over in my quiet moments. What do I want the shape of the next few years of my life to look like? Who am I without a flamingo? I blow out a long, slow breath. Come on, Salvation Island, live up to your name. Save me. Or help me save myself, at least.

I stare at Ali’s name for a few seconds more and then, resigned, I tap her name to dial. I’m duty bound to at least let her know what’s happening here, check in and see how she wants me to play things. I hear the clicks and pips of the numbers as it attempts to connect, hillside to capital, but just as it makes the link a fierce whip of wind unbalances me and I stumble forward and lose the connection. Shit. I try again, holding really still, but all I get is voicemail. I can feel myself coiling back up with the familiar stress of it all, and I roll my shoulders and tell myself to step back from the feelings and leave it for now. I sigh and hang up without speaking, gritting my teeth against the urge to drop-kick the phone out into the sea.

I tap Ruby’s voicemail next, her recorded voice erupting from my phone like hot lava.

‘Cleo babes!’

I raise the phone to my ear because wherever she called me from is noisy – a din of music and background voices.

‘I’m at that place, you know the one with the blue neon lights and the waiters in rubber trousers? And you’ll never guess who I think is over at the bar. That guy … ah fuck, what’s his name, the one from last summer, remember he had that part as an extra on Hunger Games and told us he’d met Prince Harry?’

Someone shouts something to Ruby, a harsh sound, and I hold the phone a little away from my ear.

‘Sorry, Clee, that was Helena, you know, the temp from my work? Someone spilled their drink down her dress and he’s bought us all shots to say sorry. Don’t think it’ll cover the cost of getting that dress cleaned though, whatever he was drinking was sick orange. At least she’s pissed enough not to care.’

Someone in the background is counting, loud and excited. I grimace at the sound of drunk people egging each other on.

‘Better go, Clee,’ Ruby shouts. ‘I’ll down an extra one for you.’

And then she’s gone, sudden silence, and I breathe out slowly. I watch my breath drift away down the cold Irish hillside, and not a single part of me regrets not being in that bar last night drinking shots of something that would have given me a headache this morning. I think back over Ruby’s message. She didn’t ask me how things were going, or even if I’d arrived safely. It felt more like a ‘look what you’re missing’ call than an ‘I’m missing you’ call. Not intentionally unkind, just a reminder of how breakneck London life can be, and how you can so easily get wrapped up in blue neon lights and rubber trousers.

It’s strange. I spent most of my teen years fixated on the idea of making the well-trodden pilgrimage to London, of living cheek-by-jowl amongst writers and publishers, of going to sophisticated parties where brogue-wearing literary agents laughed at my wit. But dreams change, or else people do. I know now that there are people who find the pace of the city suits their bones. Rubes, for instance. Then there are others who stay for a while and slowly realize it isn’t their for ever. Am I one of these? It’s a difficult realization to accept. If I am, where will I go? What will I be next?

I pocket my phone and check to make sure Mack isn’t in the vicinity, and then I cup my hands round my mouth and have a go at primal screaming. It’s feeble. I’m embarrassed. Clearing my throat, I swallow hard and have another go. This time, I really try to give it some welly and the sound that leaves my body is part strangled cat, part hulk with a throat infection. It’s not what I was going for. I get to my feet. Limber up. And then I roar, feeling the air around me displace with shock. Wow, that felt good. I roar again, a mountain (fine, large hill) lioness, throwing all of my frustrations behind the sound until my voice is hoarse and my shoulders ache with the effort.

Primal screaming isn’t on my Salvation bucket list, but it turns out it should have been.

As I walk slowly back down the hill, I resolve to be more positive. It’s only a week until Mack can bugger off. Because obviously he is the one who has to go: I’m here to literally figure out my life; he’s just here on some tourist trip. So until then I am going to be polite, maybe even nice, so I can bring him over to my way of thinking.

I’ll pretend I’m spending a week with a slightly annoying random room-mate, like they get assigned at American universities.

It’s raining again. I’m not even going to bother noting the weather down any more, people should just assume it’s raining unless I say otherwise. I’ve had the lodge to myself for the last couple of hours, a glorious taste of what it’s going to be like all of the time when Mack leaves. I’ve lounged in the bath and tried out the red-velvet armchair beside the fireplace, a perfect spot for reading or planning the future with a glass of wine. There’s a loaded bookcase I’m looking forward to exploring in detail, and a poke around in the cupboard beneath the TV offered up a few games – a deck of cards, Monopoly, a box of chalks. There are spirits too – tequila and a couple of different whiskeys. The TV doesn’t actually work; there’s a note in the handbook explaining that it’s really more of a monitor for the DVDs that are in a box on the bookcase. Actual DVDs! I didn’t look at them; I’m spacing out the moments of discovery for delayed gratification.

Brianne’s husband dropped the food off an hour or so ago. He looked as if he’d been carved from Salvation rock, a great slab of a man with a huge beard and an even bigger grin. He made me think of those men who wear Lycra and pull lorries for fun. I’m sitting with a glass of wine now, trying to make myself relax. Mack looked equally wound up; I spotted him pacing the shoreline when I glanced out of the window while I opened the wine. His movements suggested agitation, simultaneously placing me on alert for trouble and pissing me off because I don’t want to have to deal with someone else’s shit. So I don’t get up when the door opens and he rumbles in, scowling, his big coat drenched. And I don’t say a word as he sheds his outdoor paraphernalia, slants a strange look my way and grabs a beer before coming to sit on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of me.

It’s an unexpected move, leaving me no choice but to listen to whatever he’s about to say. I mean, I could uncurl my legs from under my bum and walk away but that kind of open hostility just isn’t in me. So I swirl what’s left of the wine in the bottom of my glass and wait, studiously focusing on it.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve been short with you,’ he says eventually. ‘This isn’t your fault.’

Oh. That was unexpected. I meet his eyes, caught off guard, and for a few frank moments we’re just two normal people caught up in a genuinely difficult situation.

‘Why don’t we start over? I’m Mack Sullivan, thirty-five, photographer from Boston. Two boys, Nate and Leo. I like cold beer, the Red Sox, camping out.’ He pauses to think. ‘I’d take summer over winter, and lobster rolls and cheesecake would be my death-row dinner.’ I notice the flush on his neck when he takes a long drag of his beer.

It’s such a turnaround that I’m left floundering. I found it difficult just hearing his name earlier, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all these new details. He isn’t just the American any more, he’s a photographer and a father and a cheesecake lover.

---