But she felt increasingly wound up. Afterward, at the reception, cakes and tea were passed around by friends and neighbors, sandwiches from the bakery, and whisky was poured into teacups as they ran out of their meager stock of glasses. Someone had brought a fiddle and started to play a mournful air, even as the chatter grew louder, and there was a sense that a proper wake for Annie was coming on.
And all Flora could think of was the way people were looking at her, and her memories of her mother: the endless patience, the work, the kindness; the frustration that had surely made itself felt in the way she’d pushed Flora, out to dancing, out to tutoring and extra lessons, out into the big wide world. But nobody saw it. They saw someone who had done everything right; and she, Flora, was letting the side down.
The house was filled to the brim with people who had known Annie all her life—many, she couldn’t help notice with sadness, much older than her mother had managed—talking about her many kindnesses and hard work. Hamish was simply sitting staring into space, not even crying, which was far more worrying than his crying would have been. Eilidh, Innes’s wife, was breastfeeding Agot and Flora caught sight of them having an argument about when to leave. Fintan was nowhere to be seen.
People were talking to her father but he wasn’t listening—he could barely see them by the looks of things—and suddenly they were all talking to Flora too, and holding on to her, and Mrs. Laird was asking if she was going to come home to look after the boys—the fourth time she’d been asked precisely that question in the last half an hour—and she took another long draft of whisky, furious with them all, and went and stood next to her father, glowering.
She hadn’t realized quite how much she’d had to drink. Her father too. He got up and wandered out of the house, down across the courtyard toward the sea, followed by his friends. Flora stumbled after them.
“She came from the sea,” he was saying too loudly. “She came from the sea; it sent her here and it has taken her back again. She was never ours really.”
And the other men were nodding and smiling and agreeing, and Flora, suddenly, felt a rage as powerful as she’d ever felt, and turned on him, shouting: “That’s CRAP! Stop it! She never went anywhere and she never did anything and it was YOUR FAULT. You kept her CHAINED to the kitchen. She wasn’t a selkie! She wasn’t some kind of creature sent from the sea to be your slave! And don’t say it to make yourself feel better, because all the life she had was spent in this . . . this shithole . . .”
And she had stormed down to the harbor wall and sat there staring out to sea, feeling utterly numb, not just because of the cold wind, but because of all the things she was meant to feel, or felt, or didn’t know how to feel, and her fury at people saying it was natural, it was normal; grief for all the things her mother would never see if they even happened to her, all the grandchildren she wouldn’t know, all the things they couldn’t tell one another. All of it. Gone. Forever. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t real, and Flora vowed to herself that she would not return, even as she heard the sounds of the wake trailing down on the wind, and finally let Lorna take her to her house for the night, and caught the first ferry in the morning, back to London, back to work, thinking nothing but, I have to get away. I have to get away. I have to get away.
Joel looked at her.
“You actually said ‘shithole’?” he said mildly.
She half smiled.
“Yeah.”
“And you haven’t come back since?”
“Too embarrassed,” said Flora. “It was an awful thing to do.”
“No,” said Joel. “I’m sure it was great. Gave them something to talk about for weeks.”
“Maybe,” said Flora. Somehow, telling him about it had taken the weight of it off her. That and the gradual thawing she’d felt from the island. And she felt so comfortable and safe and warm in his arms. “What’s your mum like?” she asked suddenly.
There was a long pause, and she felt him stiffen slightly. She hadn’t thought it was too personal a question. But maybe it was.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s okay.”
But Joel was shifting, looking uncomfortable.
Overhead the storm still raged. He looked into the fire.
“Christ,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”
Flora looked at him.
“Do you want me to put you to bed?”
He looked at her.
“I don’t think I could bear it.”
Flora smiled. But neither of them wanted to break the spell. She put the wet clothes to dry by the fire, and led him to her bedroom.
“Seriously?” he said, looking at all the dance rosettes hanging from the walls.
“Oh, everyone gets those,” she said, coloring.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You were beautiful.”
Nobody had ever called her that before.
He lay down on the soft bed and smiled sleepily. Seeing him lying there was so odd; her childhood bed, home of all her young fantasies and dreams, and here he was, come to life.
“Tell me a story,” he said, half asleep; he meant it as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way at all.
Flora pulled the covers over him and sat down by his side.
“Once upon a time,” she began. Joel thought the singsong lilt of her voice was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. “Once upon a time, a girl was stolen away. From far up north where the castles are, to be taken a long way away across the sea. And she did not want to go . . .”
Flora paused. Her mother used to tell her this story, she was sure of it. But what came next? The next instant, though, she realized that it didn’t matter. Joel had closed his eyes and was completely and utterly fast asleep. She stared at his face for a long time, mesmerized by his beauty—the curve of his mouth and the slope of his cheek—and for the hundredth time she cursed herself for not being able to go through with what she so wanted to do.
Unutterably disappointed, she pulled off the blanket, and eased herself, practically naked, under the covers with him, as the howling gale deposited great handfuls of rain against the window. She felt his sleeping body against her, breathed in the wonderful warm scent of him, her pale hand tangled in the dark hair on his chest. It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t nearly enough, but it would have to do.
At one point they both woke, and what time of day or night it was, neither could say. Flora fetched them cold drafts of water from the old sink tap and they made a tent under the covers, very close to each other, and Joel put his arm round her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded like he was stuttering and nervous, which was so unlike him she had to look at him to reassure herself.
“I . . . You asked me about my mother.”
Flora nodded.
“I don’t . . . I don’t normally . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said gently.
“No!” he said, and it came out harshly. “No. I do. I want . . . I do.”
He took a long breath.
“I . . . I grew up in the foster care system. I didn’t have parents. I never knew them. I had . . . foster families. Different families. Lots.”
Flora turned her clear eyes toward him, trying not to show the pity she knew he must be so very terrified of.
“And was it awful?” she asked him directly.
“I don’t have much to compare it to,” he said, swallowing. “But I think maybe it was.”