Page 12 of One Night on the Island

I loiter a little way from the boulder, out of earshot of the woman sitting there with her denim jacket-clad back turned to me. I can’t tell if she’s on the phone from here or if she’s just taking the air. Taking the air – get me using ladylike phrases! That’s what happens when you binge-watch period dramas when you should be working. I tell myself it’s research, even though my life has very little in the way of corsets or side-saddle horse rides. Although, at a push, it could be said that we’re all just looking for our flamingo, aren’t we?

God, is this woman going to be much longer? I feel a bit ridiculous queuing for the boulder as if it’s a bloody telephone box.

I can’t hear her talking, and she’s very still. Then she suddenly cups her hands to her face and shouts. Or screams, to be accurate, a proper blood-curdler. I wince and take a few steps further back, intending to edge quietly away, but my phone beeps loudly in my pocket, finally picking up the elusive signal.

I pat my coat down in search of it, panicked, as the woman on the rock swings round. A few things strike me all at once: she’s younger than I thought, my age or thereabouts, her eyes are as green as Salvation grass and she’s really quite pregnant. A lot to take in, along with the massive rainbow-striped knitted scarf around her neck and the many silver earrings poking beneath the rim of her bobble hat.

‘Were you sneaking up on me?’

She scowls, suspicious, and then just as I start to mutter an apology – ‘No, I …’ – she cracks up laughing.

‘You’re staying at Otter,’ she says. It’s not such a great leap given that, as I now well know, Otter is the only accommodation on the island, and I’m clearly not a resident.

‘I am,’ I say. ‘Are you, er, okay?’

She looks wrong-footed, and then her face clears. ‘Oh, you mean the primal screaming thing? Just letting out a bit of frustration at my mother, she does my head in. Good for the baby, a bit of wailing, or so I’m told.’ She rests her hands on her bump and grins. ‘I’m Delta, by the way, wayward daughter of Slánú, back with a bun in the oven to bring shame on the family.’

‘Cleo,’ I say. She’s the first local I’ve heard pronounce the island’s Irish name. ‘Slánú?’ I say, hesitant as I attempt to pronounce it. ‘Did I say it right?’

She shrugs. ‘Not bad. Stick to Salvation though, only the old guard use Slánú.’

‘And you,’ I say.

‘Only when I’m being pissy about my delicate situation.’ She grins.

I feel a zing of female connection when we smile at each other. I guess it could just be that we’re a similar age, but something about her registers in my psyche. It might be that she reminds me a little of Ruby – she’s colourful and sparks with a similar energy – but I get the sense that she’s someone who knows herself well, and I feel a pang of unexpected envy. I often feel like a child playing at being a grown-up and hoping no one will notice, whereas she gives off the impression she knows where she’s headed in life. She looks as if she’s about to say something when my phone pings again, a volley of queued voicemail messages clamouring for attention.

‘Work,’ I say, glancing at Ali’s name on the screen. Ruby too.

She nods slowly. ‘Are you a writer?’

‘Yes,’ I say, wondering what led her to the assumption.

‘Thought so,’ she says. ‘I can see it in your aura. You’ve the look about you of someone who writes sweeping romances.’

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her I’m not a romance writer, but then … am I not? Not in the conventional sense, perhaps, but I write about love, so maybe I kind of am. Or perhaps it’s more than that. Maybe it’s destiny that I meet this green-eyed woman here today, maybe she’s my cosmic nudge to grasp the mantle and finally finish the novel I’ve been writing forever. To be honest, I’m a bit embarrassed about it – a journalist wanting to be a novelist, so clichéd – but secretly I have been wondering whether this trip might be a way to explore that long-held dream.

‘Something like that,’ I mumble, at odds with myself.

Delta looks away, out towards the sea. ‘It’s always been one of my favourite spots on the island,’ she says, standing up to stretch her back out. ‘I better get down the hill, leave you to your work.’

‘Don’t feel you have to leave on my account,’ I say.

‘Oh, I’m all yelled out for today,’ she says. ‘You should give it a go, no one will hear you up here.’

Except for Mack, I think, watching her as she walks away. She isn’t the kind of person I expected to find here. No Fair Isle sweater and ruddy complexion for starters, which I realize is my own terrible stereotyping.

I sit on the boulder as I press play on my first message. Ali’s voice bubbles into the air demanding the full warts-and-all low-down, of course. I’ll call her on Monday. I could try now, the woman doesn’t know the meaning of ‘weekend’, but I don’t really want to because I feel as if I’m still decompressing, a London-weary accordion un-squeezing.

Ali and I made a Salvation bucket list before I came here, mostly my own ideas with a few of Ali’s additions, stuff she thinks our readers would love to read about. I open my Notes app now and scan it, wondering which of the items I’ll be able to tick off first.

Swim in the sea. That one was mine.

I love to swim in places other than chlorinated swimming pools but rarely get the chance, so I’m hoping the sea will be calm enough at some point to swim in without dying.

Spend twenty-four hours naked. I was reluctant to add this. Not because I’m especially prudish or have any major body hang-ups, it just felt a bit shoe-horned in for entertainment value. But Ali argued it on to the list as a way to connect with nature in the most elemental way, which I guess I can get behind. Not something to contemplate while Mack’s still around, though. I slide my fingertip down the screen.

Build a fire on the beach.

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