giant One leap

“There you are.” Fiona slumped to the ground beside her daughter, the stubby grass prickly under her palms. “I always know where to find you.”

Maisie pulled at the heads of a thrift plant, pink bobbles filling her hand like balls of candyfloss. She shrugged.

“Not many places to look.” “True. But I know how much you love this spot.”

They sat on an outcrop of sandstone, glacial boulders laid out below reaching to a white froth of breaking waves.

The rocks were still splashed white, limed from the puffinbreeding season, when the Isle of St Oda was home to thousands of the squat birds.

“Hard to believe just a few weeks ago this place was full of those sadfaced little clowns,” she went on. “I’ll miss them next year.”

The heartbreak in her daughter’s voice threatened to shatter Fiona’s own resolution not to cry.

“Did you look at that list of holidays the school sent you? You’ll be home for a week in May – might catch those wee chicks fledging if the weather’s kind.”

Not for the first time, Fiona wondered if she and Alan had been wise to raise Maisie in the Hebrides rather than selling up and moving to the mainland as so many families had done.

Even in summer, a day of blazing sunshine on St Oda could fast be swallowed by fog so thick the ferry couldn’t land.

Still, through the warmer weather the place would be lively with tourists, biologists and birdwatchers, swelling the community to five times its usual size.

Winter was when St Oda felt most like an island, when the winds blasted snow against the moors.the weather could mask the mainland for days at a time.

But Alan had grown up there and he and Fiona had felt it right for Maisie to share that rural upbringing. Only now she wondered.

“Said your goodbyes?” “Yeah,” Maisie said.“i went to see Miss Connell. She gave me a hug and a book about the Vikings in Shetland. Said it will remind me of home when I’m away boarding.”

Maisie had been one of the teacher’s favourites. In an island school with only 20 pupils that might seem easy enough, but Miss Connell was tough as a mountain hare and held every child to her high standards.

Fiona remembered her saying early on what a good scientific mind Maisie had; that they must make sure she went to one of the best secondary schools on the mainland. Fiona had smiled and nodded, half listening as she watched Maisie peering at the beetle she’d captured in a match box at break time. Secondary school had seemed such a long way off, a problem to worry about some day but not yet.

But that long stretch of years had

She dared to slip her hand over Maisie’s, her grown-up little girl

crumbled away and now a new uniform and PE kit, a trigonometry set, scientific calculator and goodness knew what else had been bought and packed into Maisie’s trunk.

Train tickets had been booked and a chaperone arranged to escort her across country.

“I’m sorry your da won’t be here to see you off.you know what his work’s like.”

“I know. He gave me lots of hugs before he went. Said he’ll call me from the platform.”

Alan supplemented their income by working the oil rigs, going away for weeks at a time, leaving Fiona to run the croft alone.

“You OK?” she asked.“about school, I mean.”

Maisie shrugged, a gesture Fiona had grown used to as her daughter raced towards puberty.

“I’m all right.”

“Just all right?”

Suddenly the sun broke free of the clouds, sparkling on the waves as if they were liquid diamonds. Seabirds laughed overhead.

Another shrug.

“It’ll all be new.”

They’d talked and talked about the move to secondary school.

“I know living in a city on the mainland will be very different from living on the island,” Fiona said,“but it’s not as though you’ve never been there.”

“All those cars, Mum. It’s really busy; loud.and all the street lights – I won’t see the stars.” Whenever he was home Alan taught Maisie how to recognise the constellations, how to tell the steady glare of the planets from the distant dazzle of stars.

“There will be some, and the rest aren’t going anywhere,” her mother pointed out.“you’ll see them every time you come home.

“As for the noise, don’t forget it gets awful loud here around lambing time – all that bleating.and those stubby-winged friends of yours keep me up all night long, mooing and calling for their girlfriends.” Maisie smiled briefly.

“They are noisy.”

“You liked the school when we visited, didn’t you? The science labs with all that equipment.and the dormitories were cosy.you’ll like being close to all the museums and galleries, too. No museums here.”

“The other girls.what if they’re . . .?”

A knot creased Maisie’s brow as if she was searching for the right words. Fiona recognised that look. When Maisie had started school, there had been a girl called Kirsty a few years ahead of her.

Two weeks into term Maisie started coming home with scratched knees, a few extra bruises, racing home hungry even though Fiona always packed her off with plenty to eat.

Finally, Miss Connell had called her and Alan in, said she’d caught Kirsty tipping Maisie’s sandwiches into the bin.the older girl had been picking on her for weeks.

With a good talking to from Miss Connell the trouble had stopped, and Kirsty left soon after.

But the incident had made Maisie cautious of new people and unfamiliar surroundings.

Fiona brushed a stray hair from her daughter’s eyes.

“There are all kinds of folk in the world. Some of them are mean hearted for reasons of their own. Most are good enough.you’ll find the good because they’ll be drawn to you.”

“But my accent’s different compared to the mainland and I don’t know anything about clothes or music, and you’ve only just bought me a smartphone and I don’t even know how to use it!”

Fiona thought her own heart might break under the weight of those sad eyes.

She dared to slip her hand over Maisie’s, her grown-up little girl who shrugged off hugs now because they were babyish.

For the first time in weeks, Maisie didn’t pull away.

“Have I told you about when I first came to

St Oda?”

“No, but Da told me.” Maisie sniffed.“you’d come on a trip to see the birds.”

A tiny smile seeped into her eyes. “You saw a crofter moving his herd off the Whistling Sands.you thought how big and handsome he was and you knew right then you had to marry him.”

Fiona laughed.

“Is that what he told you? Well, he was handsome.though he’d been in the sea after a stray lamb and was wearing that old sweater of his, so he whiffed of sheep and seaweed. No, I mean after that.when I first moved here.”

Maisie shook her head.

“Well, I did fall in love with your da and we decided to get married and that I’d come to live on the croft with him. I grew up on a farm, but it was nothing like this.”

Her gaze swept across the cresting sea.

“It was hard; it felt so isolated.” “But you love it here.”

Fiona shook her head.

“Not back then. Not when the ground was hard as the rock, ewes birthing in a gale and me holding a lamb too weak to live. I didn’t love it then.”

“What happened?” Maisie asked quietly.

Fiona shrugged.

“I stuck with it.time passed and I found things to love here.your da; the way the sun seems to sink into the water; how the seals slap so clumsily over the rocks.”

She squeezed her hand.

“And then you came.and now, even though Da has to work on the rigs to help keep us, the island’s so part of me I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Maisie thought.

“What about the sheep? Who will help you if I’m not here?”

“There are other crofters, like Archie.and Stuart, the new vet, is only half a mile away.”

Maisie squeezed Fiona’s fingers so tightly they hurt.“but when Da’s away you’ll be lonely.”

“Ah, pet,” Fiona whispered.“i’ve lots of good friends here, you know that.there’s Annie at the shop and Suzanne over at the old lighthouse. And did Miss Connell not tell you? She’s starting up a book club come the autumn.

“If I see her out of school it means I shall have to get used to calling her Bess instead of Miss Connell, which will be queer.”

Maisie chuckled.

“And I’ll have your da when he’s back from the rigs and you, my Maisie, back and forth between the isle and the mainland so often you’ll be dizzy! You can tell me all the amazing things you’re learning and I shall tell you all about the new brand of sheep dip I’m using and the ewe with mastitis.”

Maisie made a disgusted noise and Fiona laughed.

“But we can’t do any of that if you don’t take this step, can we?” Maisie shook her head. “Right. Let’s go and make sure you’re all packed.”

On the ferry crossing to the mainland, the grey noses of porpoises broke the water around them.

“They’ve come to see you off,” Fiona told her.

Maisie had been quiet since they left the cottage, staring across the bay, the cliffs, the Whistling Sands, drinking in every detail.

“Carrie will be there at the train station.” Carrie was the chaperone. “She’s only young so you’ll have lots to talk about.”

“She’s twenty-three!”

Fiona sighed. She’d given all the advice she had to give, told Maisie how loved she was a million times.there was nothing left to say. She pulled out a parcel from her bag.

“Me and Da bought you something.”

Maisie took it from her.

“A book. Can I open it?”

Fiona nodded.

Tearing at the paper, Maisie revealed the cover. It was a photograph of the Earth from space, a green and blue marble hazed with swirls of cloud hanging in the blackness of space.

“To the stars and back,” Maisie read aloud.“off-world adventures.” She stared up at Fiona, eyes brimming.

“All those astronauts going into space, leaving behind everything they know,” Fiona said.“must be pretty scary, don’t you think?” Maisie threw her arms around her and Fiona buried her face in her daughter’s hair, inhaling the smell of her mixed with the sea.

“Go and have some adventures. Home is always here, even when you’re away.”

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