‘Where are we going?’ I asked him.
‘Outside.’
He had a strong sense of where to go, veering through side-streets that led out of town and stomping down back roads that bore signposts to the names of villages I didn’t know. Or he would simply set off across the fields, flattening crops with his stride. When the last rays of the sunset faded we were walking uphill with not a word spoken to each other in hours. We stopped in the lea of a dry stone wall, on thin grass, and I watched the sheep huddling together by the gate as he shook out two sleeping bags from his old rucksack, followed by a thermos flask of coffee and a tin of beans.
‘Get comfy,’ he said.
We shared the beans. I was ravenous.
This might seem strange, but I was not a girl, and he was not a man. We were not people. I have never felt so light, so free of expectation, and that was terrifying. If I wasn’t to be treated like a woman-in-training, then what was I?
I don’t remember falling asleep. I do remember waking, in the light of the dawn, and never having felt so cold in my life. I lay there, in its grip, and smelled burning. Nothing made sense. The smell was pungent, deep, rich. My grandfather laughed, and I turned my stiff neck towards him. He was leaning back against the wall, smoking one of his cigars. He puffed out a cloud in my direction, then took the cigar from his lips and smiled. It was not a smile for me. I don’t think he knew I was awake.
I imagined that was his routine. A cigar at dawn, and a private joke at the world’s expense. At all busy, boring people, and their day to come.
‘That’s it,’ says Katie. ‘So far, anyway.’
‘When did he die?’
‘A while back. Lung problems. Emphysema.’
‘What year, though?’ I ask. I want to place it in my own timeline.
She thinks it through, her head tilted. ‘I think around 1997? I remember visiting him in the hospital. He’d been found in a barn by a farmer.’
‘Was that in Bristol?’ My student life, the fish and chip shop.
‘Bristol – no. No. I don’t think he ever went south of Manchester.’
‘Then why would I have found him in Bristol? Why would he have followed me to Skein Island?’
She has no answer for that.
‘It can’t be him,’ I say. ‘My ghost likes people. He likes me.’
‘It is him.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘The laugh.’
A person can be expected to know a laugh beyond reasonable doubt.
‘He hated everyone,’ she says. ‘Why would he hang around? What did he find that’s worth staying for?’
It’s still light outside, although it’s getting late. Even a short journey makes a difference to the perception of the beginning and the end of the day.
‘It’s too much of a coincidence,’ I say. ‘Think about it.’
‘I am!’
‘It’s ridiculous.’
‘Unless he already knew we’d meet at some point. Unless it’s all pre-ordained. Written.’ She says it thoughtfully. I can tell she likes the idea.
I don’t. Because it means I’m not the star of my own life. I’m the warm-up act for some tale of grandfather and granddaughter reunited, and my ghost is not my ghost at all. He’s used me as a method of transport to reach an entirely different destination, and I realise in a rush that I don’t want him to leave me, not like this. Not for her.
‘If this is all about you, wouldn’t he just turn up at your house?’ I ask. ‘Why waste all this time, hanging around with me, waking me up every morning?’
‘Who knows?’ she says. ‘There are more things on heaven and Earth…’
We are not friends. We’re not going to be friends. It’s not a surprise. She has already been clear that she doesn’t make friends. It’s only a certainty, now, from my point of view.
‘Not good enough,’ I say. ‘We need answers.’
She considers this.
‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘Bring your duvet.’
I’ve never been camping before and I’m not sure this really qualifies. Duvets under the stars, wearing all the clothes I brought with me to keep out the cold that permeates all British nights, regardless of the season. Katie’s grandfather was used to this.
‘What’s this going to prove?’ I ask her.
‘I’ll know it when it comes to me.’ She’s lying close beside me, within touching distance. She picked the spot for us to sleep, after we walked the length of the island, tramping around until she found a place that worked for her. I wonder if she chose it according to her memory of that night; we are in the shadow of a stone wall, and there are sheep in the field beyond. It’s as if she was describing this place all along, in her declaration.
At least a tent would create the illusion of safety, and a little heat. Mingled breath, and the warmth that living bodies give out. Instead there’s only my heightened awareness of the dark, and what it can hide, and the stars overhead don’t seem to light a thing.
‘Do you go camping a lot?’
‘This is my second time,’ she says, dryly.
‘What…’ It strikes me as an insolent question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. ‘What was it about your grandfather that makes you want to emulate some areas of his life but not others? You don’t go camping, you don’t smoke cigars. But you do refuse to get into relationships. Or would you only get into one for a bet?’
‘I’m not emulating him,’ she says. ‘It was only that we understood each other. I realised because of him that it was okay to not like people.’
‘Because you liked him.’
‘Yes,’ she says, as if that wasn’t a contradiction.
‘I don’t understand that.’
I’m putting off attempting to sleep by having this ridiculous conversation, I know it. I don’t want to wake up early tomorrow and find out her truth.
‘Are you in a relationship?’ she asks me, from where she lies.
‘Yeah.’ I try to sound convincing, but my initial pause was too long. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Of course it is.’ I hear smugness in her voice. ‘If it was going well you wouldn’t be here, on this island, would you? Taking advantage of the one visit policy. Using your Get Out of Jail Free card, at least for a week.’
Is that what I’m doing? ‘It’s just a sticky patch.’
‘Have you been in lots of relationships?’
‘The usual amount.’
‘And they all hit sticky patches, and you keep wading through them. See, that. That, I don’t understand.’
I turn over and face away from her.
‘Good night,’ she says, softly, and a little while later she has the temerity to softly snore.
I wake up to clean air.
The sky is a dark, deep blue above me, and I am the coldest I have ever been. I force myself to sit up, gathering the duvet around me, and notice how the sky is changing colour on the horizon. As I watch pale streaks form and collate and turn to glorious orange. It’s dawn.
He’s not here.
I want to call out to him, but it would be a presumption to use the name Katie knows him by. And even if he had that name once, it surely wouldn’t fit him now.
This is what loneliness feels like.
Katie stretches and mutters.
My eyes water and sting. My cheeks are raw.
A chuckle.
I place it. It came from behind me, on the stone wall. He’s sitting on the wall. I swivel and see the cigar smoke, rising up and dissipating to blow out to sea, away from where we lie.