Page 7 of Beautiful Ugly
“But I do,” I insist. “I’ve been invited to stay for three months.”
Her makeup-free eyes narrow into suspicious slits. “By who?”
“Kitty Goldman. She owns a cabin there.”
She shakes her head. “Never heard of her, and I’ve lived on Amberly all my life.”
“She inherited it from Charles Whittaker.”
The exceptionally tall woman stares at the island in the distance before studying my face, and her expression is hard to read. Then she smiles.
“Charlie’s bonnie old writing cabin? Good for you. Well, you’d best grab your things and get on board then. Your car should be safe parked up here for a wee while at least.”
“Can I not take the car on the ferry? It looks like there’s room.”
“Visitorsare not permitted to bring vehicles to the island.”
“What? But I have all my stuff...”
The woman’s weathered face folds into a weary frown. I see myself through her eyes and try again. I need this woman to help me.
“I’m sorry. I’ve had a long journey—”
“Haven’t we all,” she interrupts, as though I have already taken up too much of her time. “You can bring as much as you can carry,oryou can stay on the mainland. Them’s the rules, and that’s the only option, I’m afraid.”Only option.What a ridiculous expression.Onlymeans one, andone optionmeans none. “The choice is yours. You’ve got as long as it takes me to get a sausage sandwich from the food truck to make up your mind,” she says, then walks away.
I have always been rather slow at making quick decisions, but this one seems simple enough. I grab a rucksack filled with Columbo’s food and things, a suitcase filled with mine, and throw my satchel containing my laptop and notepads on my shoulder. I can’t carry anything else, not even the bag of food I packed, but I grab a packet of milk chocolate digestives and shove it in myjacket pocket. That will have to do for now. I lock the car and hurry toward the boat, Columbo trotting at my side just as the ferrywoman returns with her breakfast. She takes a large bite of her sausage sandwich and ketchup oozes out, landing on her chin. She curses, wipes it with a white paper napkin, and the resulting stain looks like blood.
“Decision made?” she asks, and I nod. “Then welcome aboard,” she says with a smile, before taking another bite.
The seagulls squawk and scream, flapping their dirty white wings as if protesting, and circling above the ferry as it breaks free from the jetty. Their wingspan is vast, casting swooping shadows across the deck, and when I look up, I see that the tips of their beaks are red, as though dipped in blood too. They descend and dive so that I have to duck out of the way, and the ugly noise they make almost sounds like a warning:
Go back. Go back. Go back.
I’m sure it is just the exhaustion and my imagination playing tricks on me, and I notice the birds do not stalk us for long. They retreat toward the mainland when the ferry pulls away, slowly sailing out of the bay.
The sun has fully risen now, and everything is a dazzling shade of blue. It’s hard to tell where the sea stops and the sky begins. The Hebridean Sea is rough and the other passengers all stay inside their vehicles, but that isn’t an option for us. Columbo and I make our way to the front of the ferry and I sit my things and myself on a metal bench on the exposed deck. It’s cold, and we get showered with an occasional mist of sea spray, but the view of the Isle of Amberly is utterly mesmerizing. A halo of white sand and a turquoise sea surrounds the tiny island, making it look like a mirage and this feel like a dream. A pod of dolphins leaps from the waves the ferry has created as though they are escorting us on our voyage, and my face stretches into an unfamiliar smile.
Our adventure might have had a tricky beginning, but this isbeautiful, and I experience something like hope for the first time in a long time. Perhaps Kitty was right, and thisisthe fresh start I so desperately need, a second chance to get my life and career back on track. My agent is almost always right. I look around the deck, wondering if anyone else has spotted the dolphins, and that’s when I see her. She’s wearing the same bright red coat she had a year ago, the one she was wearing the night she disappeared, and is standing at the back of the boat, staring right at me. I shiver, not just from the cold, and it feels like time stops for a moment. Columbo barks, breaking the spell. I glance down to see what he is growling at—it turns out he was looking in the same direction as me, at her—but when I turn back, she is gone. It all happened so fast that it feels like I might have imagined it, but the woman I saw was the spitting image of my missing wife.
AWFULLY GOOD
Reading people used to be something I was good at, but lately I don’t trust my own judgment. I don’t even trust my own eyes. Insomnia sometimes causes the edges of my reality to bend and blur, but the woman reallydidlook like Abby. I grab the bags and Columbo’s lead and hurry toward the other end of the boat, weaving through the parked cars. The rocking motion causes me to lose my balance and stumble and I grab hold of a grubby railing to steady myself. When I look up whoever I saw is still gone. If she was ever there in the first place. When you lose someone you love you see them everywhere.
She looked soreal. I spin around and hurry between the cars again, peering inside the windows. I study every face I see but none of them are her. The black van with its tinted windows is harder to see inside and I step away, feeling like a fool. I am delirious with exhaustion, confusion, and grief. Maybe driving all the way to Scotland and spending a night sleeping in the car wasn’t a good idea when I’m already so very tired. I can’t remember what it’s likenotto feel completely shattered. And broken. And alone. I convince myself that I must have imagined it. That I must haveimaginedher. It’s a human affliction to see what we want instead of what is really there.
My mind wanders inside the memory of another boat we were once on together. A much nicer one than this. It must be almost a decade ago, but I still remember that day so clearly. I had booked a three-night cruise on the Dalmatian Coast as a surprise anniversary gift. We boarded in Croatia, and despite a mix-up with the booking resulting in a cabin with twin beds, it was supposed to be a romantic getaway. Abby was already behaving strangely and sent me to the bar to get us some drinks. When I returned to our tiny cabin with a couple of overpriced cocktails, I could hear music inside, the familiar sound of Nina Simone. I opened the door and discovered Abby dancing to “Feeling Good.” The kind of slow dancing that was funny and sexy at the same time. She had her back to me, as though she didn’t know I was there, and she was miming the words and swaying her hips slowly from side to side in time with the music. All she wore was a smile, very short white shorts, and her bra, and I still remember how the white lace looked so bright against her tanned skin. I can picture her face when I close my eyes, and it’s her eyes I remember most. They were the bluest I’ve ever seen. It was like staring into the ocean and wanting to drown.
“There you are,” she said when I put the drinks on the bedside table.
“Here I am.”
“I hope you die in your sleep.”
I looked up, thought perhaps I’d misheard. “What?”
“I hope you die in your sleep. I’ve been thinking about it lately—death—and it’s got to be the best way to go. If you truly loved someone,that’show you’d want them to die, and I love you more than anything. So I hope you die in your sleep.”
We said that to each other every night before we went to bed from then on.