Surtsey stayed where she was, scared that her mum would see the truth

Surtsey felt the room wobble. She presumed it was the alcohol, but the look on Louise’s face told her it was really happening. Just a small tremor, the kind that happened all the time now in Edinburgh, but still disconcerting. Surtsey spread her feet and tried to balance. She stared at Louise, suspended in the moment, waiting to see if it would escalate into a proper quake or shrug away to nothing. Louise held the sides of her bed.

You were supposed to get under furniture or into doorways but usually there was no time for that. A small jolt like this didn’t bring down masonry, it only reminded you the world wasn’t as stable as you hoped.

“She’s restless.” Louise had a habit of talking about the earth as a woman. Being raised in the 70s by hippy parents had planted the Gaia earth mother idea in her head, fuelling her love of geophysics.

What was Surtsey’s reason? The passing on of the torch, carrying on her mother’s life work, investigating the volcanoes and earthquakes that demonstrated the world was alive.

The tremble under their feet stopped, leaving an unsettling calm. Surtsey had been standing with her arms out, palms down, and she moved her hands back to her side.

“It’s Tom,” she said.

“What about him?” Louise said.

“The dead person on the Inch. It’s Tom Lawrie.” “My God. What happened?”

Struggled

Surtsey shook her head. Louise patted the blanket by her legs suggesting Surtsey come closer but she stayed where she was, scared her mum would see the truth.

“They don’t know, maybe a rockfall during yesterday’s quake. Maybe something worse.”

Louise took a suck on the oxygen mask by her bed, her thin arm barely managing to lift it. She dropped the mask, picked up a tissue and coughed into it. She leaned back on her pillows and stared at the ceiling.

She struggled to get breath, the rattle in her chest impossible to shake. She held up a hand like she was trying to stop time. “Was it you who found him?”

Surtsey closed her eyes for a second and prayed for another earthquake.

“One of the other students. Tom was in the cove on the northwest, round from the jetty. We were taking samples on the eastern cliffs.”

“Oh, Sur.” Louise’s hand wavered above the blanket, threadbare sunflowers stretched underneath. “Come here.”

Surtsey took her hand and held it. It felt like her mum was barely there, her limbs twigs, her skin just dried leaves. There was no weight to her at all.

Surtsey remembered Tom’s weight upon her, the solidity of him as they lay on that stupid island a month ago, in the open air, sand scrubbing at her back. She’d yelled out to the wind, believing there was no one for miles.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Louise said. Surtsey laughed despite herself. “There are worse things going on.”

“It’s not good for you, all this death.” Surtsey sighed. “I don’t mind, I like coming to see you.”

“I meant Tom.”

Surtsey examined her mum, the deep crevices in her face, the yellow of her skin. The smell she gave off, ammonia and earth, like she was returning to the elements.

“He was a good man,” Louise said. “Always tried to do the right thing.”

Surtsey wondered about that.

“How has Alice taken it?” Louise said. Surtsey felt a tightness across her forehead and shoulders. She stretched her neck like a diver ready to jump.

“I don’t know,” Surtsey said. “We only just got back ourselves.”

“Poor woman,” Louise said. “Having to tell the girls, too, I can’t think of anything worse.”

Escape

Surtsey thought about the cameras on the prom. Had anyone seen her take the boat out or bring it back? What about satellite imaging or cameras on the firth? What about the imaginary blind date that she fed Halima?

She looked at Louise, at their hands together. Louise was staring out the window, east to the bump of Berwick Law. Her eyes were wet, maybe tears, but then her eyes were always wet, as if the last of her body fluids were desperate to escape.

Louise was in a nappy the staff changed every few hours. Surtsey had to do that before Louise came here. Louise had been disgusted by the whole situation but the truth was that Surtsey didn’t mind, didn’t feel it dehumanised her mum.

Just the opposite. It felt like a chance to repay her for bringing her up, a chance to demonstrate love.

That seemed ridiculous and she never said it to Louise or Iona, but part of her was glad she’d been able to show how much Louise meant to her before she was gone.

Louise removed her hand from Surtsey’s and wiped at her own cheek. Definitely tears. Surtsey closed her eyes and felt the warm flush to her face as her own tears came.

She walked home along the prom, flapping at her face with her hands to get the blood in her cheeks to calm down and clear the puffiness from her eyes.

She walked past mums pushing buggies, kids on scooters, teenagers laughing and mucking about, cyclists zipping past on the commute home, all of it a blur.

She usually found all this reassuring, it made her feel part of something. But right now she felt isolated, a membrane between her and the world.

“Hey, Sur, you OK?”

She hadn’t even noticed Donna pushing an old lady in a wheelchair towards her.

“Hi.” She felt unable to carry out a normal conversation. Drunk and stoned, sad and angry, guilty. The day was too bright, the sun too warm on her skin, and she squinted.

Kindness

Donna gave her a look of kindness, no trace of pity. Usually, when someone knew her mum was dying they acted all weird and distant.

But Donna was different, a natural carer, none of the hang-ups. It had been a good choice for her to go into nursing, especially palliative care. She was strong, could handle the death and sadness.

The woman in the wheelchair was in her eighties, asleep with a tartan rug over her knees despite the buzzing evening heat.

“Jesse loves the sea air,” Donna smiled. “But it sends her right over.”

Jesse was wearing a headscarf that made her look like a South American revolutionary.

Maybe she had been. She was old enough to have done all sorts of things with her life.

It was so easy to write her off as an old lady waiting for death, when she could have made love to Che Guevara in the jungles of Guatemala or argued over communism with Castro in the Cuban mountains. Surtsey felt dizzy and closed her eyes. “Maybe you should sit down,” Donna said.

More tomorrow.

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