Her mum loved the open water, loved islands, loved the remoteness and isolation and freedom

Surtsey reached out and took Louise’s hand. Shocking lack of flesh, like she was already just a skeleton in a thin bag of skin. She squeezed gently, her thumb in her mum’s palm. Surtsey wiped at her tears. “Alice knows.” “Oh, darling.” “I deserve it.” A long pause. Too long. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve been an idiot.”

“We all do stupid things.”

“Not you,” Surtsey said. Louise looked out the window. “I’ve had my fair share.”

“Like what?”

Louise looked at the congealing food on the tray, took a sip from a water bottle. Swallowing looked like such hard work, Surtsey didn’t know how her mum managed it. Louise put the bottle down with a trembling hand.

“Let’s talk about something else.”

Surtsey touched her knuckles to her eyelids, the cold of her hand drawing the heat away from her face. “Mum, what are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.” Louise picked at a loose thread on the blanket. “When you come to the end of your life…” “Mum.”

“…things reduce down. Like you’ve been simmering the whole time, reducing until there’s only the essence left. All the rest of it.” Louise lifted a hand and waved at the bland decor. “It’s just distraction. Noise.”

Sharp relief

She looked out the window. The haze from earlier had lifted and Fife was in sharp relief. Light glinted off the windows of the holiday homes at Burntisland, winks of life against the landscape.

“How’s the boat?” she said. Surtsey remembered waking up in it. Was that just this morning? “It’s fine.” Louise turned. “I’d like to go out in it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not well enough for a boat trip.”

“Says who?” Surtsey pointed at Louise’s body under the covers and immediately regretted it. Louise smiled. “Are you going to deny a dying woman her last request?”

Surtsey snorted. “Don’t pull that ‘last request’ stuff, you’ll be around for a while yet.”

“Maybe not.”

Surtsey felt her heart tighten. “Have they said something?”

“Nothing like that.”

Surtsey narrowed her eyes. “I can’t get you into the boat on my own and you can’t manage yourself, so how would we do it?”

“Iona could help, maybe.” Surtsey sighed. “When was the last time she came to see you?”

“Yesterday.” Surtsey frowned. “Really? She never mentioned it to me.”

“Your sister doesn’t need to tell you everything.” “What was she doing here?”

Louise looked at her. “What a strange question. She came to see me, of course.”

“She can’t help anyway, she’s working.” Something came over Louise’s face and she pressed the red button on her bed for assistance. A few moments later there was a knock on the door and Donna came in. “Not eating?” she said.

Louise shook her head. “You know how it is.” “You can manage a wee bit, surely?”

Louise pursed her lips. “Donna, when do you finish your shift?” Donna looked at her watch. “Just under an hour. Why?”

“How would you like a boat trip?”

Freedom

The wine had worn off and Surtsey’s head felt tight, but once they got a few knots up the spray in her face and the wind skimming off the water slapped her awake. Louise sat in the prow, blankets already wet, the bulk of a life-jacket making her look more solid than she had in a long time.

Surtsey was on the tiller, steering the boat into the brown-grey swells, not much in the way of waves today but it didn’t take a lot to make them buck and bounce, the mass of water like brick under the hull, a shudder with every hit.

They were pointing north-east, the boat aiming for Berwick Law but really just getting distance from shore into the wide-open space. Donna sat to Surtsey’s right, gripping the rubber handles on the edge of the boat, feet wide apart.

“You OK?” Surtsey said. “Fine.”

Louise looked more alive than Surtsey had seen her in ages. She regretted not having brought her out in the boat recently. Her mum loved the open water, loved islands, loved the remoteness and isolation and freedom.

Why hadn’t Surtsey taken her out here every day? Because she was already used to the idea of Louise dying, she had already put her in a coffin and lowered her into the ground in her mind. It was a terrible thing to admit to herself.

“She seems happy,” Donna said, nodding at Louise.

“Yeah.”

“What about you?” She was shouting over the buzz of the engine. “What about me?”

“How are you?”

“Fine.”

It was the standard answer. The word you never had to think about, let alone mean. Fine, fine, fine. When really you were terrified, miserable, confused, angry, hopeless.

Louise turned back to them. Her eyes were so bright Surtsey wondered if she’d taken something. Louise pointed west. Surtsey had been waiting for it, knowing all along what her mum wanted to do. The Inch.

Without speaking Surtsey aimed the boat westwards in a loop. Of course this was crazy. They didn’t have permission to land, it wasn’t an officially sanctioned boat, and it was still a crime scene.

“What are you doing?” Donna said, eyes narrow as the boat bounced over the wash. Surtsey pointed. “The Inch. Mum wants to see it.”

“We’re not landing though?” Surtsey shrugged. “Have you been up close before?”

Donna shook her head and gripped tighter as the boat’s nose flipped up then landed in a splash.

Obsessed

It always surprised Surtsey that other people weren’t as obsessed with the island as she was. It was virgin territory, a brand new land, why wouldn’t you want to explore it?

And yet people walked along that beach every day and never gave it a second thought. Maybe folk took it for granted because it had been there for over two decades now, part of the scenery.

Surtsey could remember countless drunken conversations in pubs, where she tried to explain the attraction. Why she studied it, how it brought her closer to something elemental, a feeling she belonged.

Of course, no one belonged on the Inch except the birds who nested on the cliffs, the insects who made it their home, the grasses and mosses, the fragile ecosystem that had developed in two decades. They were the future of the Inch, the future of the planet.

Surtsey thought of humanity as a blip, a tiny ecological anomaly that would soon be wiped away, leaving the earth to get back its equilibrium. Fanciful stuff, humankind was ruining the planet as best it could, but she wouldn’t be sorry if they destroyed themselves before they destroyed the world.

More tomorrow.