The Valley at the Centre of the World

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This morning, Sandy had to help Emma’s father with the killing. The lambs were ready, and the day was dry. Last week, he’d promised he would be there to lend a hand, to do what needed done. But he hadn’t known then that Emma would be gone.

He poured a bowl of cereal and boiled the kettle. He ate at the table, then stood by the window to drink his coffee. From there he could see the valley laid out in front of him, the brown thread of the burn unspooling through the crook of the land. Starlings squabbled on the stone dyke in the corner of the garden. Sheep grazed and gossiped in the nearest field. Outside Maggie’s house, at the end of the road, a cockerel announced itself to the world. Beyond, the valley slipped into the sea. A glaze of salt on the glass made everything look further away than it ought to be.

Yesterday, Emma left, with a bag of clothes and a few things from the bathroom. Her toothbrush was gone. Her shampoo and conditioner. The hairbrush from their bedside table. The little stick of lip balm. She’d be back next week for the rest, she said, and after that, who knows? She would look for a place on the mainland – Edinburgh again, most likely – and in the meantime she’d be staying with a friend in Lerwick.

The timing had been a surprise, but the leaving had not. They’d talked about it for months, on and off, until Emma had tired of talking. In the end it was hard to say whose decision it had been. The thread of those conversations had grown increasingly tangled and incoherent, until it seemed the only escape was to cut loose. And though Emma had made that cut, it was Sandy who had pulled the tangle tight. He had engineered his own abandonment. n