Christmas on the Island Read online

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said right away, shrugging. ‘Bit over the top.’

  ‘I brought lunch,’ said Flora. She didn’t want to give him a cuddle as it would feel patronising, weirdly. Also, until their mother had died, they hadn’t really been a family that did that. Instead she waved the Tupperware box.

  ‘Oh, actually there’s already a chef here,’ said Fintan distractedly. ‘So . . .’

  ‘Fine,’ said Flora. ‘I’ll eat it. I’m starving—’

  She stopped herself. She was always starving these days.

  ‘Anyway.’ She changed the subject. ‘Is he awake?’

  Fintan nodded.

  ‘He’s not bad today. Want to come and say hello?’

  Moving up the stairs was rather spooky; Flora knew there were other people in the house, but she couldn’t hear anyone. The thick, soft carpet muffled their footsteps too. The house smelled of expensive perfumed candles in various variations of fig and orange peel and mulled wine, but underneath it, they couldn’t entirely dissipate a very slight but distinctive disinfectant smell.

  Even though Flora saw Colton as often as she could, it was still a shock every time. She recalled the strong, tall, wiry American she had first met striding into a boardroom in the heart of London two years ago; brilliant, mercurial, utterly confident. Insufferably so. She smiled sadly to think of it, and followed Fintan as he pushed aside the heavy wooden door leading to the master suite.

  The heavy curtains that covered the vast bay window had been opened, leaving a clear view of the tempest outside. It was an astonishing, bewitching vista at any time; more dramatic now with the waves dancing and snow all around. Flora steeled herself, turned to the diminished figure on the vast hand-carved four-poster bed.

  Only the four-poster had gone – of course it had – replaced by a hospital bed; inevitable of course. Colton had to be protected now. And Flora remembered from when her mother died, years earlier, once you brought that bed home . . . She didn’t want to think about that. Instead she pasted on a smile.

  ‘Hey!’

  It hurt so much to see him like that. He’d always been thin, but lithe; healthy in that way of Californian tech billionaires.

  Now he was cadaverous. He looked far, far older than his forty-seven years: his face was sunken, his lips beginning to turn in, his eyes milky and unfocused. He had always been so vital, so full of bounce and ideas – some good, some utterly ridiculous. Such a vigorous man. And now this thing was punching the life out of him, blow after blow, day after day.

  Flora sat down on the bed and gave him the gentlest cuddle she could manage. He smiled weakly and she saw with relief that he recognised her. He didn’t always. There were good days and bad, but she didn’t see so much of the bad. She just cooked for a traumatised Fintan when he popped into the farmhouse for five minutes, when he just wanted to sit down and have a vast cup of tea and some shepherd’s pie that wasn’t cooked by specially flown-in vegan anti-cancer diet chefs, and hug Bramble, and hide his tears in the big dog’s fur, and if Innes’s daughter Agot was there, let her rattle on to him about developments in PAW Patrol and someone called Shellington who was a doctor and also a sea otter, and to whom she was apparently quite attached, then sing ‘The Stick Song’ for nine hours.

  Flora could sense that Colton wasn’t ready to talk at this point, and anyway, what was there to say? Colton had made it perfectly clear that his wishes were to be respected – in a legally binding document he’d had Joel draw up for him in the summertime after his first diagnosis.

  No experimental cures. No life-prolonging – and misery-prolonging – chemotherapy. As far as Colton was concerned, he had made his plans and said his goodbyes and was now letting the tide go out, ever so slightly; the waves came less far up the beach; the sea got further and further from view, bit by bit.

  Fintan, of course, did not agree. He hadn’t even come out to his family until he’d met Colton and had fallen completely and utterly in love for the first time in his life. And now it was being taken away and he simply couldn’t bear it. Flora wanted to tell him that he’d meet other people, that he’d fall in love again. But she’d seen them together, seen how crazy they were about each other. And she didn’t know if she’d be speaking the truth. She knew the way she felt about Joel could never ever be replicated, which was why she was currently so terrified.

  So. They just all tried to be there: for Colton here, and Fintan back in the familiar farmhouse kitchen, where the old clock ticked away on the mantelpiece above the roaring fire alongside the old pewter bowl, a wedding gift that had belonged to Eck’s mother and now contained keys and assorted odds and ends, not that the house was ever locked. The drift of post on the sideboard that piled up until Innes sighed and started doing the accounts. The kettle that must have boiled a hundred thousand times. The old huffing Aga. Just the little familiarities of home, where you didn’t have to pretend not to be sad. You didn’t have to pretend that everything was going to be all right, that it was going to be a great day. You could simply come home and be as grumpy or silent as you liked; Eck wasn’t much of a one for talking anyway.

  ‘Could you nip home and see Dad?’ asked Flora, knowing Fintan sometimes needed an excuse to get out of the huge house. He nodded eagerly. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ And he kissed Colton very gently on the cheek and, with a guilty look on his face, escaped.

  Flora patted Colton’s shoulder. ‘How is your awesome morphine today?’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ Colton croaked. ‘Also I’m going to ask the doc to up the whisky scrip.’

  ‘Brilliant idea!’ said Flora in a stupidly cheery voice she didn’t recognise. She blinked.

  ‘When is the doctor coming anyway?’

  Colton stared vacantly into space.

  ‘I don’t . . . I don’t really know when it is now,’ he whispered.

  ‘Do you want some water?’ said Flora, and Colton nodded, and she lifted his neck up and helped him sip a few drops. Even that was a massive effort for him. His skin felt like paper under the incredibly expensive flannel pyjamas he was wearing. There was nothing to him.

  ‘Everyone gets like this in the winter,’ she went on. ‘Four hours of twilight then you have absolutely no idea where or when you are.’

  Colton blinked.

  ‘Has Fintan been reading you the stock market reports?’ she continued.

  There was an untouched Financial Times sitting by the bed, along with the Economist and Time.

  Colton’s mouth wavered a little.

  ‘I don’t . . . He reads, but I don’t . . . I don’t really. It’s too complicated for me to follow . . .’

  He waved a translucent hand. Flora frowned.

  ‘I’ve got a magazine in my bag,’ she said, taking out a weekly she’d nicked off Jeannie, the doctor’s receptionist, who bought them all for the waiting room then read them later in the Seaside Kitchen and left them behind, whereupon the girls would wait till nobody was looking and pounce on them.

  ‘I could read you my favourite section,’ said Flora. ‘It’s called “Celebrities Doing Fake Paparazzi Posing on the Beach”.’

  Amazingly, Colton’s eyebrows perked up and his gaze briefly focused.

  ‘Okay good!’ said Flora, making herself comfy. ‘Now. Here’s Gina. She was in the jungle and vomited four hundred grubs over everyone and she’s famous now . . .’

  Which is how Saif found them half an hour later, comfortably side by side as he dealt with the extraordinary change in temperature from the outside to the inside by hurling off as many layers of clothing as he could.

  This was Saif’s second winter on Mure, but somehow he’d managed to forget the first one. Maybe you had to forget it, he’d thought, scraping ice off his car that morning, or you’d never make it to another one. Like childbirth.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, and Flora had smiled to see his handsome, serious face – he had long dark hair that always seemed in need of a cut, and a short beard and the slightly panicked look around
his huge dark eyes that you could see in most working parents. ‘I thought that was Fintan’s place.’

  ‘It is normally,’ said Flora. She glanced at Colton, who appeared to be drifting off to sleep.

  ‘He just needs . . . a bit of time away . . .’

  Saif nodded.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘How is . . . ?’

  Saif looked at her, his face as grave as ever.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can only talk to . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, I know. Sorry.’

  She stood up.

  Saif softened.

  ‘I would say . . . as expected,’ he said.

  It didn’t matter, Flora mused, how often they were given the terrible news. It still seemed almost impossible to believe that Colton would one day not be here. So she chose not to believe it, which meant it felt like she was constantly being retold.

  Saif came over to the bed – a nurse materialised from nowhere to help him, one of a battalion Colton had on call, very quiet and discreet. Saif roused Colton long enough to check his vitals and nod his head. Flora knew it was her cue to leave, but she couldn’t, not quite yet.

  ‘Okay, well, everything is as expected, yes?’ said Saif, glancing at his watch and timing Colton’s thready pulse. ‘Stable, meds are good, pain is good, yes?’

  Colton grunted. ‘More whisky.’

  ‘I do not hear that.’

  Although Colton didn’t notice Saif’s slight nod to the nurse.

  Saif packed up his bag. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  * * *

  Flora caught up with him in the hallway.

  ‘Um, do you have a sec?’

  Saif looked pained. This was the terrible problem with working in a very small community: anyone who saw you generally had something they wanted to ask you about and if you said yes to one person you’d have to say yes to everyone and he’d spend the rest of his life doing it.

  ‘Flora! Please make an appointment with Jeannie.’

  ‘Jeannie will scream and misbehave and I will lose all hopes of confidentiality and if I even go into your stupid surgery there’ll be ninety-five people in there I know and they will all come straight in the café afterwards, you know they always do, so they’ll just be asking if I’m contagious and if it’s safe to eat the food and word will get about and my business will fail and close down. Is that what you want, Saif? Is it?’

  Saif knew he was being played, but he was a very kind man. He folded his arms.

  ‘I’m not examining you.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  Flora swallowed. Now she had to say it out loud, something she had never said before. She realised how nervous and scared she was. It was kind of hilarious, kind of ridiculous: a stupid, stupid sentence and she wasn’t sure she was going to get through it. She took a deep breath. She’d been very tearful recently anyway for one reason and another.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Chapter Five

  Saif’s first instinct was to smile and offer his best wishes. Then he remembered that it could go two ways, so he bit it back and put his stoic mask up again. On the other hand, he could only assume that if she didn’t want to continue with the pregnancy, she probably wouldn’t have cornered him on a staircase.

  ‘So this is . . . good news?’

  Flora’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know. I mean, is it? I think so. I mean, it’s too early. I mean, we’ve hardly been together for five minutes. Is that good for a child? I don’t know. And Joel is basically still in recovery, and—’

  Saif held up his hand.

  ‘Sorry – I am asking: you want to keep baby?’

  ‘Oh! Yes. I . . . Yes. Yes, of course! Actually ideally I’d like to keep it . . . inside . . . for about two years, so we at least have the chance to, you know, move in together. Anyway. Sorry. This isn’t your problem. I just wanted to ask. Could you mark it on my notes? And send me for scans and stuff? Without me having to come in right away?’

  Saif narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Have you told Joel?’

  ‘I am definitely and absolutely in the process of considering getting around to telling Joel,’ said Flora.

  Saif blinked. There was absolutely no doubt that he owed Flora a lot of favours, not least the number of times he’d been called out to an emergency on Mrs Laird’s (who looked after him and the boys) day off and he’d had to deposit Ib and Ash in the café with two orange juices and a scone between them and trusted her to keep half an eye on them until he got back.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How many weeks – you know?’

  ‘The test said 3+,’ said Flora. ‘Are those right though?’

  ‘As right as anything we could do in lab. Did you buy test in town?’

  ‘Hahahahaha!’ said Flora. ‘I don’t think those are even real tests they have on the shelf. Can you imagine? Nobody local has bought a pregnancy test on Mure since they arrived. No, I got it sent under plain wrapper from the mainland.’

  ‘You make good spy,’ said Saif, starting off down the stairwell.

  ‘I’ve been a lot of things,’ said Flora. ‘I like being a café-owner best.’

  ‘Well, I hope you like next job as much,’ said Saif, finally allowing himself to smile as he left the enormous building.

  Flora didn’t like to think about how difficult everything was about to get, but she took a deep breath as she watched him go. Phew. Well. That was the first bit over with. She felt rather shaky. She had said it out loud. instead of just continuing to walk around in a daze as she’d done for the last few days, completely unable to believe it despite the fact that statistically she could more or less see what had happened. He was pretty hard to resist, Joel Binder.

  She sighed.

  Oh God. No, she wasn’t going to think about that right now. But she was going to do something she wanted to do desperately. Tell someone who’d be pleased. She could hear the Land Rover roar into the drive, which meant Fintan must be coming back.

  She went back into the bedroom and lay down beside Colton, whose eyes were half-closed again.

  ‘I’m going to tell you a secret,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t tell anyone, not even Fintan.’

  ‘I forget . . . stuff,’ said Colton.

  Flora reached for his hand.

  ‘You’re going to be an uncle again,’ she whispered into his ear, and squeezed his hand very hard.

  It took an age, but eventually she felt the gentle pressure of a return squeeze on her hand. She glanced up. There was a tear running down the side of his face but he couldn’t lift his hand up to reach it. She gently wiped it away.

  ‘Agot,’ he rasped finally, ‘is going to hate it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘I know.’

  Chapter Six

  There was no doubt about it, Lorna was flustered. Christmas was a crazy time in every school, and Mure primary was no exception even if there were only thirty-eight children in the whole place. The school was divided into two classes: the lower school, which Lorna took as well as being headmistress, and the uppers, which the saintly Mrs Cook did, as well as doing her best to help out with the admin. The fact that Lorna had as much government administration to cover – and often more, seeing as the island schools had to constantly prove that they were managing with all the children together – as vast primaries with six classes per year group and an office full of secretaries and administrative staff felt wildly unfair to Lorna, but she got on with it.

  Because otherwise she loved the school. It was perched above the town, up a hill (which the children sledged down in the winter whenever the snow lay) and was in the traditional Scottish school style: a red sandstone building with old traditional carved entrances for boys and girls, no longer used of course, and a flat playground with hopscotch grids painted on. Inside, huge old oil radiators kept them cosy on the wildest of days, even though the windows rattled. When the school had opened, one hundred and forty years before, the locals had been sceptical: it was s
een as a foreign intrusion on their way of life. The radiators had changed all that. Hardy island children, used to unheated rooms, draughty cottages and outside plumbing, flocked to the cosy environment of the school room, warmed their chilblains on the heater, were reluctant to return to the fields. The old guard had warned it would make them soft. And perhaps it had, for subsequent generations had started to move off the island. It was only now that people were coming back, lured by the island’s promise of peace and beauty and calm, and good Wi-Fi, more or less, depending on the wind.

  It didn’t stop Lorna worrying though. Canna’s school, near Eigg, had closed the previous year after its last four pupils had moved away. You could never be complacent about it.

  And now there was the nativity play to get underway. Parts allocation was always a nightmare. Plus the amount of farm children who thought it was totally unreasonable that their favourite coo didn’t get a part was an annual challenge.

  Lorna frowned at the register. It would make sense to ask Ibrahim, Saif’s son, to play Joseph. After all, he and his brother, Ash, were the only Middle Eastern children they had. On the other hand, would it be insensitive to ask him to act out a major part in a Christian story as a non-Christian? On the other hand, why would that matter? On the other hand, would she look tokenistic by putting the only non-white child in the main role? On the other hand, if she didn’t cast him would she look ridiculously racist, seeing as he was right there? On the other hand, might Saif not like it? If it was literally any other parent at the school, she would just call them. And there was that history, hers and Saif’s.

  Therefore, of course nothing could happen even if it was seemly for a teacher to date a parent, which it wasn’t. And he barely spoke to her, which was also a fact to consider in the whole mess. So she tried not to consider it at all, just get on with things.

  She wrote ‘Joseph – Ibrahim Hassan’ on the cast list. Then she crossed it out again. She remembered, nostalgically, her teacher training in Glasgow, where there was a healthy mix of children of all sorts of backgrounds and this kind of thing didn’t matter. Here, people would notice. She wrote his name in again; it would be good for Ib, a very reserved, slightly sullen boy (for which nobody blamed him, given he’d lived, age eleven, through things most people could never imagine) to be up on stage, applauded, clapped, made to feel important.