‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s walk up to the house. If your leg is fine with that.’
In response she sets off at a fast pace. Within moments she has to slow again, as she reaches the boggy fields and her high heels squelch into the mud.
‘So the house is all finished, then?’ she says, her breathing coming faster.
‘Nearly. Turns out builders work a lot faster when you give a bonus for meeting deadlines.’
‘Lucky you, with all that money. I would have thought you’d have moved to the Bahamas by now.’
‘There’s no place like this, I’ve discovered.’
‘A great location to have a break from reality,’ she snaps. She’s so very angry with me, for some reason. But still, she walks on, and shows no sign of attempting to turn around, to signal to the fisherman to take her back.
When we reach the gravel path she stops, catches her breath, and attempts to scrape some of the mud from her heels onto tufts of wild grass. Her movements fling yet more mud up onto her coat, and I try not to smile as I wait, with my walking boots and thick socks and spattered trousers in place.
She takes one look at my expression and scowls. ‘I’ve brought more sensible shoes in my bag, okay?’
‘Well, good.’
‘I just—This is armour, okay? I knew it was ridiculous, but I needed armour. Besides, isn’t this a job interview? If it’s a real job.’
‘It’s a real job,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t respond. The house is in view now, as close to the original as I could get it. Work is nearly done on a conical extension, rising up from the centre of the house, a kind of tower that will act as a library for the new declarations. It will be a light, airy construction, with plenty of windows to catch the sun, and shine out like a lighthouse.
‘Are you sure your leg’s okay?’ I ask her.
‘It’s fine.’
‘And how’s Hamish?’
‘I’ve left him.’
‘Seriously?’ This astounds me. ‘Why?’
She ignores the question. ‘Have you left David, then?’
‘Not exactly. We agreed that we had to be apart.’
‘How very mature you are.’
In silence, we come up to the house, enter the hallway. It has been reconstructed in the familiar black and white tiles. I walk through into the dining room, and we take off our coats and sit on either side of the table. Rebecca shakes her head at me. ‘It looks exactly the same.’
‘I wanted to capture the original feel of it. Lots of things are different; some of the artefacts were damaged, and I donated others to museums.’
‘If I was your therapist I’d suggest to you that this is not going to help you to move on.’
‘It’s a good thing you’re not, then.’ I don’t want to argue with her, but she’s making it impossible to avoid. In desperation, to break through to something real, I say, ‘But the job of Resident Therapist is yours, if you want it.’
‘What?’ She glances around the room, as if expecting to spot hidden cameras. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘I’m not interviewing anyone else. As I said in my letter, I’m reopening the island, and I think you’re perfect for it.’
She bursts into tears, then clamps her hands over her face and takes shuddering breaths. I don’t know what to do. Eventually I get up, go out to the kitchen and pour her a glass of water. When I come back to the dining room she is composed, mascara clotting around the corners of her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she says. She takes the water and sips it. ‘But I don’t know if I can accept.’ Her face quirks into despair, then straightens once more.
‘Why not?’
‘I believe this island should help women to establish real answers to their very real problems, and I want to be a part of that. I’m not sure what you believe. I think it has something to do with statues that come to life and suck up words. I couldn’t encourage you in this fantasy. Let me be clear about this.’
Her morally superior tone of voice reminds me of how irritating she can be, but I’m determined to have her here to be my voice of reason. Nobody will work harder to restore this island to what it should be – the way that she pictures it, as a haven. Besides, she links me to the roots of this island – why I came, what I expected to find.
‘I don’t need you to believe what I believe. I just need you to be yourself.’
‘That’s easy.’
‘Only you could say that, Rebecca.’ I tell her of my vision of the island. How it will differ from what it was, and how we’ll try to make it work.
She listens hard, nodding, frowning, then puts down the cup of water, and runs her fingers through her hair. I sense she’s decided to accept my offer; it’s in the way she looks around the room, this time with the fresh perspective, evaluating it as a home.
‘So what happens now?’ she says.
‘You can start whenever you’re ready.’
‘I’m ready now.’
‘What about your stuff?’
‘All in the bag.’
It occurs to me that there’s something more going on here than I had bargained for. ‘Rebecca, what’s going on?’
‘I told you – I’ve left Hamish. I really don’t want to go back and see him. It wasn’t amicable. He became…’ She bites her lip. ‘Listen, I can’t go into this. You’ll feed it into your fantasy and make it part of your reality, and… God, this is ridiculous! I can’t do this.’
‘What did Hamish become?’
‘I… Look, he set up a network of internet friends to monitor and report back on paedophiles. People they thought might be paedophiles. There was a man living on our street and Hamish thought he was… Well, he had been convicted of something, and Hamish got really concerned over it, and so did some others. And then he set up an online group and it just grew. It went from a few friends to thousands of them. All over the country. He said he was doing it to keep everyone safe, to keep our grandkids safe. When I pointed out we didn’t have grandkids he wasn’t even listening. And he always listens. We communicate. That’s who we’ve always been, as a couple. We communicate.’
She stops talking. I don’t try to break the silence that surrounds us. Eventually, she says, ‘See? I can feel you thinking it.’
‘I’m only concerned for you,’ I tell her, but I’m a terrible liar, and she shrugs it off.
‘You’re right, though, it’s all men. His group, all men. Doing vigilante things. Organised packs, on the streets. He said I needed to be protected, that all women and children have to be kept safe in these times. What kind of a person says things like that? That’s not Hamish. But I can’t fight him, I can’t stay and watch him…’ She shakes her head. Her grief and pain are waves that emanate from the core of her. I can feel it washing over me, dragging me down too. ‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong with the world. It’s the media, perhaps. The pressure of the news, the tabloids. It’s not what you’re thinking, Marianne.’
I try to focus, to not let my feelings for David get caught up in this. ‘But you don’t want to be out there any more, whatever it is. You want to be here. Where it’s safe. I can understand that.’
She clears her throat. ‘Oddly enough, I do feel safe here. Safe alone with the only certifiable loony I know. Sorry, I shouldn’t use such terms, should I? Very unlike a counsellor.’
‘Well, you’re not alone. Inger is here too. She’s very efficient. With her help we’re going to be back in business in no time.’
‘That’s great. Listen, I didn’t mean it, the loony thing. It’s just the stress.’
‘You did mean it. But it’s okay. I actually kind of like being called a loony. It makes me feel less boring.’
Rebecca straightens her skirt with the palms of her hands. ‘Marianne, no matter what you do, nobody could ever call you boring.’