Always different, always unexpected, yet somehow reliable too, always there for her

Another tremor made Surtsey’s stomach drop. Her hand went out but only found a ragged hedge. Her legs shook from stress as much as the earthquake. She thought she might be sick.

The world was trying to shake her off into space. The planet had finally had enough of the billions of parasites on its surface, it was ready to start again, shake itself clean.

Then the weird stability afterwards, silence after noise. Bile rose from her stomach up her throat.

She spat on the pavement and pushed her hair away from her face.

She began again down Bath Street then stopped outside the Espy.

Stared at the chipped paint on the wooden doors for a moment then pushed them open. She scanned the bar.

No sign of Iona, just the lanky Canadian guy she sometimes fooled around with, shaved hair on one side and emo tattoos sleeved up his arm.

“Is Iona here?” she said.

He looked up from his phone, glanced around. “She didn’t come in for her shift. I’m covering for her.”

Surtsey stared at the gantry of spirits behind him, tempted. “If you see her,” Emo said, “tell her she owes me one.”

Surtsey pulled her phone out and called. Iona’s voicemail. Christ, where was everybody? “Call me, we need to talk.”

Offended

She rubbed at her forehead and looked at her phone. Checked social media for any posts by Hal or Iona. Nothing.

She checked her messages, even though she knew neither had been in touch.

Flicked to the last messages from Tom and Brendan, then flicked out. What was she doing to herself?

She pushed open the door, breathed in the salty air then headed along the prom.

The New Thule protestors were outside the boat enclosure, claiming the earth was offended by humanity.

Maybe they had a point, she thought, maybe they were right all along.

There were 20 of them clustered in front of the Beach House cafe, which couldn’t be good for business.

They were subdued, maybe by the recent quakes, wondering what their earth mother was trying to tell them.

She pushed through them looking for Bastian, wondering about him and Iona, but she couldn’t see him.

She took a leaflet from a young man with thick hoops stretching his earlobes open. She crumpled the leaflet and threw it in a bin.

She walked on, hunched with her hands in her pockets, daring the earth to unsettle her again.

She rubbed at her cheek where Alice had slapped her. The blood was still raised at the skin and she wondered if it would leave a mark.

Maybe she could have her charged with assault. But Surtsey knew she deserved it.

She might not have killed Tom but she felt responsible, felt as if she’d started this whole chain of events where everyone around her was dying.

She walked past the swimming pool where her mum had taught her to swim and kept walking.

The sun was high to her right, making her squint as she came out of the building’s shadow.

The Inch was behind her, nagging at her mind. She went past the ice cream van, thought about how many hundreds of cones she’d eaten from there.

With her mum, with Iona, more recently with Hal or Brendan.

Every step she took retraced a thousand previous walks, over and over, the promenade defining her childhood, her adulthood, her recent descent.

The sea always changing, the sand shifting, the light dancing or brooding, the haar sometimes in, snowstorms bristling the sand, the wind throwing oil drums or dead seals or once a rotting whale carcass onto the shore.

Always different, always unexpected, yet somehow reliable too, always there for her.

Creases

She passed the hospice and couldn’t help looking at her mum’s window. She stopped in her tracks like she’d hit a wall.

An old woman was sitting in a wheelchair at the window, thin white hair in wisps from her head, like lightning tracers.

She had bags under deep-set eyes and thick creases in her forehead, and she smiled at Surtsey, who just stood there.

Of course they would reassign the room, they were a business. Of course some other sad, dying person would love to have Louise’s sea view.

But Surtsey hadn’t got her head round that yet. She’d expected to see the room empty, but now some cancerous old witch was sitting at her mum’s window looking at the view, sleeping in her mum’s bed and using her mum’s bedpan if she couldn’t make it to the toilet.

The old woman raised a spindly hand and waved, more of a muscle tremor than anything. Surtsey put on a smile and waved back, then wiped tears from her face and walked on.

She gazed at the sea, a flat sheet of hammered silver.

She went through the contacts on her phone and called Mum.

Voicemail. Her mum’s voice. “I can’t get to the phone right now, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

Then the bit about re-recording your message, followed by the tone.

Silence.

“I miss you, Mum,” Surtsey said. “I need you. Come back to me, please.”

She was crying hard now.

“I’m such a mess, my God, you would be so disappointed.”

She laughed and sniffed, wiped away tears with the heel of her hand.

“You would tell me to get my act together, but you would give me a hug too. Christ, I need that right now.”

Shouting

A crackle on the line, a ghost in the ether.

“I’m so sorry.”

She ended the call and stood there, trying to get her breathing back to normal, clutching her phone like a rare fossil.

She walked towards home. As she walked she pictured her mum in their house, shouting to her and Iona to brush their teeth and get their shoes on, they were late for school.

Or telling them their tea was ready. Or patting them on the bum as they walked up the stairs in their jammies, trailing teddies.

Just life, the stuff we ignore because it’s so commonplace. The stuff that matters.

She reached her house and stopped. Standing on the doorstep was Donna, a smile on her face and a bottle of red wine in her hand.

More tomorrow.

Fault Lines, by Doug Johnstone, is published by Orenda Books and costs £8.99.