In response to your first five letters: I’m applying to Inverness College to study marine biology, photography, and maybe sports fitness for my Advanced Highers. I’ll be starting in August, as long as I get through S5 without messing up. I’ve also signed up to do my AIDA level 1 course at the dive center there. Obviously, I could go straight to level 4, but they wouldn’t let me without having the certificates. I’ll soon show them! My parents weren’t very happy about it, but they couldn’t really stop me. My dad said he’d go to the Bahamas to watch me compete in the world championships! I hope that happens one day.
In response to your sixth letter: Thank you. Thank you for finally being honest with me. Here’s the thing. Deep down, I think I always knew—I just couldn’t admit it to myself. I was in my own safe bubble, and I didn’t want to see the things that were right in front of me. I was too busy only seeing things that I didn’t want to see, but my subconscious must have been driving me to find the truth. An accidental detective. Or something. Ha!
I think about you all the time. I think about how brave you were to try to bring Eddie out of the water, and how horrible it must’ve been to live with what happened. I know that you tried to look after Dillon. I often wonder how I would feel about you if I’d known about you from the start. I think I would have tried to kill you. But then I wouldn’t have discovered diving. Or the truth about everything else that day. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I forgive you.
I might see you at Loch Duich in the spring for the West Coast Big Dive! I haven’t told my mum yet, but I will. She’s doing okay. I don’t think my dad will be coming home anytime soon, but things are better between us. Dillon’s okay too. He gets weekend leave now, and he should be able to come home next month—but I think he’s got a long road ahead. And as for me? I’m just Elsie.
Elsie Main (the Black Isle’s deepest girl)
I haven’t got any pockets, so I slip the letter inside my bra and stretch out on the ground so that Eddie’s headstone is behind me. I glance over at the house and see a silhouette in Dillon’s bedroom window. My brother waves from the window and I wave back.
Despite the frost, I feel warm. I empty the air from my lungs, from every cavity in my body, and look up at the angelfish in the sky.
Dear El,
I’m not expecting you to reply to any of my letters. Although I hope you will one day.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth, and even sorrier that you found out the way you did. There’s one more thing I have to tell you. Here goes . . .
Danny never told me who you were. I’m sorry I let you think that. And it wasn’t the day of that party that I realized, either. The moment I met you, I knew you were cool. You were my kind of girl—hiding out in the (my!) boathouse eating sweets and smoking cigarettes, but there was something familiar about you. Something that disturbed me a bit. I told myself that I was imagining it, but then you jumped off the harbor wall, and when I dragged you in, it hit me. I knew you were that boy’s twin sister. It was like I was reliving that horrible moment again, five years on. It felt like a punishment, but one that I deserved. I should have stayed away, but I just couldn’t. I saw your loneliness and I saw how alive you became in the water. I wanted to be the one to keep you alive because I had failed you once, and because you gave me a reason to keep going.
You didn’t seem to mind that I was socially awkward, or that I’d done lots of things in the past that I wasn’t proud of. I kept telling myself that it could never last because of what I had done, but I was never brave enough to leave. I tried, and I know I hurt you, but I was too selfish to stay away.
I don’t expect you to ever forgive me, but you should know that I love you and I never meant to cause you this much pain. Please forgive Dillon. He needs you.
T x
PS—Let me leave you with a few interesting facts about the River Tay. You probably already know this, but the River Tay is the longest river in Scotland. It flows east. Did you know that?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe huge amounts of gratitude to the following folks for being utterly awesome: