APRIL 11. MONDAY. MY BIRTHDAY. SCHOOL STARTS AGAIN TODAY after the Easter break, but I’m not going in. Today I am exempt from school. The sky is still a smoky black when I get dressed. I think I’m the first up, but then I hear the sounds of the others—my parents moving around their bedroom, the wardrobe door sliding open and closed, my mother’s hair dryer, my father’s electric razor. The squirt of an aerosol, one long spray followed by two short ones, then a gap and another short one. I hear the groan of the electric shower in the bathroom as it starts up, and then the running water, which lulls every now and then because the pressure is bad. A dry cough from Dillon’s room. There are no voices. I wonder how loud it might be if we could all hear each other’s thoughts. It would be unbearable, I decide.
One hour until we leave. It zooms by, like a time-lapse video—the black outside turns to blue-gray, to violet-gray, to pinky-gray, and finally it’s just gray, like pencil lead. I use a pocket mirror to apply my Ruby Red (it is, after all, a “special day!”), then climb back under my duvet and wait. In the mirror I watch my lips whisper the words “Eddie. Do you miss me? I miss you!”
My father finally knocks on my door and opens it slightly. Half a face appears, and then his whole body slides into my room.
“Are you ready?”
His voice is even, like he’s bored. I nod without looking at him. I can’t bear to see his eyes. Not today. He turns and leaves.
I chew a Wrigley’s Extra because if I brush my teeth, I’ll mess up the lipstick.
Downstairs, I find Dillon pacing up and down in the living room.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, hugging his arms around his waif-like body. “Just waiting.”
We pace in opposite directions, meeting in the middle on each length, occasionally brushing shoulders. My father waits in the hallway with his arms hanging slack by his sides. The silence continues, aside from the gurgling fridge, and my rumbling stomach.
Mum is the last to appear. She always wears the same outfit on this day: white jeans and a tight white T-shirt with nothing over the top, as though it were the middle of summer. She moves like a ghost through the hallway to the front door. In one fluid movement she takes the car keys from the hall table, passes them to my father, opens the front door, and drapes her blue raincoat over her shoulders. We all walk in single file to the car, the glass in the front door rattling as we close it behind us. We drive in deafening silence to Chanonry Point. The drive is only five minutes—we could walk, but we never do. I think it’s so we can make a quick getaway.
No one says “Happy birthday, Elsie.” I say it to myself instead and picture a future birthday when I get cards, presents, and a cake made of donuts.
5
THE BLACK ISLE ISN’T REALLY AN ISLAND—IT’S A PENINSULA that sticks out from Inverness into the North Sea. It’s called the Black Isle because when the rest of Scotland is coated in snow, it remains uncovered, someone once told me. We seem to have our own weather system, which mostly involves bitterly cold winds, rain, and fog. We do have the occasional blizzard, though. Chanonry Point is a spit of land on the east of the Isle that extends even farther out into the choppy water. Sometimes it feels as though we’re on the edge of the world.
We park and tumble out of the car like lemmings going over a cliff. The sky is a hazy white now, and the cold wind pushes the clouds out over the North Sea. As we navigate our way around the lighthouse and along the shingle beach, patches of pale blue sky appear for a few seconds at a time before disappearing again. Mum’s faded blue jacket clashes with my father’s brown woolly sweater as they walk side by side, stepping in unison, having forgiven each other for the biscuit episode. Mum leans into my father as though she couldn’t walk without him.
Dillon and I walk a few paces behind them, Dillon’s arm around my shoulders. I feel him shivering beside me and think about squeezing his hand or wrapping an arm around him, but I don’t. I have to take three steps for every two of Dillon’s and we collide awkwardly against each other, but neither of us does anything about it. His head is turned to the shore, toward the dolphins splashing about in the froth. They leap high into the air and glide back down into the water effortlessly. Watching them makes my heart expand in my chest.