Her mother does not visit her on the tidal island. Her grandparents do not visit. The woman that is faceless; made of sand. She scowls up at the pinpricked night sky, and if Luda gets too close, she disappears.

  ‘Do you know how to capture the scars?’ Luda’s voice carries through the air. Her camera is comforting in her hands. The darlings in the gorse, the small ones, are fascinated by the camera. The woman looks up, studies her in that very particular way that those no longer here have of studying those who remain. For a moment, Luda thinks that she might answer, but the woman turns towards the water and promptly disappears.

  Luda realises that she’s become cold. That Darcy is standing next to her, staring.

  ‘Mum,’ he says, and tugs her inside.

  At first, Cassandra is surprised to find Father Lee on her doorstep five minutes after Iris has arrived with cans of baby carrots. It is clear from Iris’s expression that she had not been expecting Father Lee. Between them: a licking seam of red.

  ‘Oh, you’re both here! Wonderful, wonderful,’ he says, as though he has run into them at the local cafe, instead of following one of them to the other one’s house. ‘Make myself a tea, shall I?’ he says, raising his eyebrows at Iris, who does nothing but sip hers and look back at him.

  Luda, Cassandra thinks, watching Father Lee’s back as he heads to the kitchen. This is about Luda.

  Iris drinks her tea. ‘I still don’t know why it has to be in the kirk,’ she says, as though nothing has happened; as though Father Lee has not turned up on this rainy spring night to pressure them.

  ‘It’s a photography exhibition, Iris, not a Satanist convention,’ Cassandra says, but there is no heat in her voice. Her focus, like Iris’s, is trained on the sounds coming from the kitchen.

  Father Lee comes back with a sweet and milky tea. He has also unearthed some stale oatcakes from a cupboard and put them on a plate. He is immensely pleased with himself.

  ‘Right,’ he says, spreading a napkin across his knees. ‘I was hoping to talk to you about the Managan woman.’ He addresses only Iris, and then Cassandra understands why he’s come here and what he will say. How wrongly he’s intuited everything. She reaches for her tea, relaxing a little bit.

  ‘What about her?’ Iris asks, clearly not understanding. She casts a quick glance at Cassandra and seems comforted by Cassandra’s sudden calm.

  ‘I don’t think this island can really cater to her needs. Poor Violet Reynolds is caring for her and those children – after everything she’s been through.’

  ‘It’s my understanding that Violet quite likes Seannay – and the Managans, for that matter,’ says Iris.

  ‘The Managan woman has been wandering.’

  ‘Och!’ says Cassandra. ‘Since when is a bracing walk a crime, Father?’

  ‘She’s turning up to my parishioners’ houses without invitation, agitated and insistent.’

  ‘Same could fairly be said of you, Father,’ Cassandra says.

  All the muscles in Father Lee’s neck tense. ‘She’s dangerous,’ he says at last.

  ‘She’s really not that bad, Marcus,’ Iris says, voice weary. ‘And they’re expecting her to keep improving. Is that really all you’ve come here to say? May as well have brought the cans yourself and saved me the bother.’

  Father Lee blinks rapidly and Cassandra has another sip of tea. Iris has always made a very good cup of tea. ‘Iris, I hate to ask, but I need you to help me find her somewhere more suitable to live,’ he says, suddenly intent upon her. ‘Before she hurts someone. Or herself.’

  ‘Pish!’ Cassandra snaps. ‘Good Lord, Marcus. What a performance.’

  Iris glances at Cassandra, and Cassandra knows that she now understands.

  ‘Can I count on you?’ he asks Iris, his voice sorrowful.

  Father Lee, who had thought Cassandra’s presence would fence Iris in. Father Lee, with so few friends of his own, does not truly understand the depths that friendship can reach. Father Lee, who has never recognised the connection between Iris and Cassandra as anything other than antagonistic. He had thought Iris would be eager to side with him against Cassandra; would welcome the opportunity, as she has done in years past, to present a united front.

  Poor, lonely Father Lee.

  ‘No, Father. Unfortunately you can’t.’ Iris sighs, like it’s a very heartbreaking thing for her to say. Cassandra reminds herself that it is, really. Iris has invested an awful lot in Father Lee. ‘I just don’t see what danger Luda Managan poses. She’s strange, but she’s always been strange, hasn’t she? And it’s truly up to her family and the doctors to decide where would be best for her.’

  ‘The council will evict them from the house, then,’ he snaps.

  Iris sighs again. ‘No, the council won’t.’

  ‘Of course we will, if it’s what’s best for the community.’

  ‘It’s my property,’ Iris explains. ‘The council maintains it and runs it, but it’s mine.’

  He stares at her and Iris stares back. Cassandra considers the tins of carrots and wonders exactly how hungry she’d need to be before willingly ingesting them.

  ‘Right,’ he says, red-faced. He thumps his tea down next to the oatcakes on the table. ‘I see.’

  He leaves his napkin scrunched on the floor. They watch him striding off down the garden path.

  ‘Sadly, not the end of it,’ says Cassandra.

  ‘No,’ agrees Iris. ‘But quite satisfying.’

  As Iris and Cassandra discuss Father Lee’s visit, Theo knocks on the caravan door and Darcy opens it. They have been avoiding each other for weeks now. Since Darcy stormed off from the bay.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Darcy stands back from the door.

  The caravan feels too small for the both of them, as it always has. Darcy clears his throat and sits down on his bed. He shuts his laptop. He’s wearing blue jeans and an old, green jumper that’s much too big for him. He pushes the sleeves up his arms and rubs at his cheek. He hasn’t shaved. These days, he often hasn’t shaved. ‘What do you want?’ he asks. And then, more tentatively, ‘Do you want a coffee? I have instant in here.’

  Theo shakes his head and then glances at the closed laptop. ‘You researching something?’

  ‘No.’

  A corner of a book is visible from beneath Darcy’s cream-coloured pillow. Theo frowns. ‘Is that The Salt Boy?’

  ‘No!’

  Theo reaches for it and Darcy does not move quickly enough to stop him. The pages are folded down, the cover creased and marked. The red shard of sea glass tumbles out with it and Darcy tucks it quickly out of sight.

  Theo puts the book back down on the bed and clears his throat. ‘Your mum …’

  ‘I know.’ Darcy runs his fingers around the edge of the laptop. ‘Gerald was at the brewery today.’

  ‘Oh.’ Theo shifts. ‘Was he?’

  ‘He was asking how you were.’ Darcy picks some fluff off his sleeve. ‘Guess you’re not seeing him as much these days.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him … like that … since the seal.’

  ‘You really don’t need to tell me about your sex life.’

  Theo exhales. ‘I just mean …’

  ‘It’s not my business.’

  Theo reminds himself: Distance. Stillness. ‘Do you remember when you used to read to me?’

  Darcy breathes out. ‘Of course I do.’

  Theo passes Darcy The Salt Boy. ‘Will you read a bit?’

  Darcy takes the book. For a moment, he says nothing. Then he pushes his sleeves back up his arms. ‘Just a few pages,’ he says. But the sky’s beginning to darken and his throat is stinging by the time he finally sets the book aside.

  In the evening, Ewan gives Luda a lift to the hospital. Ewan does not comment on Luda hanging on to the passenger seat with both hands or how she insists on her window being wound right down, even if it’s hailing or snowing or sleeting. He does not comment on her suddenly wanting to go there, when she has until recently been completely uninterested in visiting the place.

  Ewan, towelling off the inside of the passenger door. Sighing, but never saying anything about it to anyone.

  This afternoon, Luda sits next to Tristan’s bed, alone. She holds his hand (the rest of him). It’s papery and the same temperature as the room. Unscarred skin. The scattering of half-healed wounds, spun into the shape of hexafoils. Witch marks.

  She stares down at her own hands. She wants to capture the scars. Seannay, with its people-from-the-in-between and shells and whales and secrets. Joshua would not be able to see the scars, she is certain. She has asked the Joshua that visits her now, but he never tells her one way or the other.

  Joshua had called her hysterical whenever she got upset. Even if she didn’t cry or raise her voice. No matter how reasonable she was, how calm, he always threw that hateful, belittling word at her.

  ‘Don’t get yourself worked up,’ he says now, appearing at the other side of Tristan’s bed. ‘I didn’t say you were hysterical that often.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  MAY (THEIR THIRD YEAR)

  When Darcy wants to do something, his body may or may not let him. It is a fickle and unknowable thing. Some nights, curled up on the floor of the caravan, Min will talk about the water. About holding her breath.

  ‘I don’t want to hear about it!’ Darcy snaps.

  Min ignores him. Keeps talking.

  He is not scared for her. He knows this. But he tells himself that he is. That he does not want to hear of her swimming, of her diving into that wild, cold ocean, because he is scared for her.

  He is not scared.

  ‘Do you ever feel like … like your body won’t do what you want it to?’ he asks.

  Min frowns. ‘No,’ she says. ‘What do you even mean by that? We are our bodies.’

  Darcy shakes his head in the darkness. Reaches for his sea glass.

  Min talks about her diving. On the edge of sleep, her words will become muddled. Flames and stones. Whales in the sound. It makes him shiver; it makes him acutely aware of the witch marks in the ghost house.

  That night, Darcy tries to dream himself into the sea. Into the filtered, shadowed impossibility of it. As though sensing it, Min stirs in her sleeping bag. ‘You need to go into the sea, Darcy. You need to swim.’

  He ignores her. Tries, instead, to dream himself into the deep. When he does finally fall asleep, he dreams of two Darcys. Him and his body, walking together through dust and dirt under a wide and pearly sky.

  The wind the next day becomes so wild and animal that Luda is frightened and backs away from the windows. A cyclone out to sea. Sea spray and rain. The waves become more urgent, the high tides higher than they’ve ever been before. Tristan-from-the-in-between sits on the edge of the couch where Luda sleeps. ‘Something happened to Darcy,’ he tells her, over and over. Outside the weather roars. Luda holds a cushion over her head, trying to drown out his voice. She can still hear him, just as loudly. As persistently.

  ‘Something happened to Darcy.’

  And she realises that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Darcy – clever, beautiful Darcy. Something happened to Darcy. Nothing has happened to Darcy.

  The wind. The wind. The wind.

  Violet watches her from the kitchen. ‘You alright, Lu?’

  ‘I can’t think in here.’

  Violet folds a tea towel very precisely on the edge of the sink. She adjusts one of the photos of Allie that she has had framed and placed on the kitchen bench. ‘Go outside for a bit. Take your camera.’

  Luda stares at Violet. Tristan-from-the-in-between stares at Luda.

  ‘My camera.’

  ‘The exhibition, remember? They’re holding the opening night at the kirk. Come on, Lu. You were going to take some photos of island life for it.’ Violet does not use a loud, slow voice with Luda. She scolds her often. Sometimes she strokes Luda’s hair, as though Luda is very young.

  Luda stands, thinks that she will go outside with her camera. She remembers loving it; the world through her viewfinder. Rocks and ocean and the stretch of ever-changing island sky.

  A gust of wind shakes the panes of glass in the window. She hears the caravan clatter a little on its perch near the ghost house. Luda knows this: that sometimes leaning into the wind is the only thing that takes away her fear of it.

  Why does she so often think that she sees that dark-haired woman, the set of her face oddly like Iris’s, threading gorse and seaweed into a wreath?

  Min and Cassandra do not always speak. Their voices are tidal things – blazing and guttering. Sometimes, Min can’t get the words out fast enough. Stories of the sea. Whales. Sometimes Cassandra will tell Min stories. Other times they sit in silence, surveying the landscape visible through Cassandra’s front window. Sometimes, Cassandra’s mind will wander and Min will have impressions of scarred skin and a clear sky and the tidal island by candlelight. The slick feel of whale oil. Snow scattered bright and shocking on green grass.

  An orca rising from the sound in moonlight, its face flickered with scars.

  How many times has Min told Darcy to dive into the water? To swim? She was convinced, had always been convinced, that it would soothe him. He thinks of going into the sea, but something stops him. Something animal. Something that shies away from the cold, the tides, the wildness of the world beyond land.

  Him and his body. Maybe the water will bring them together – maybe that is the real reason why Min seeks out the deep. Darcy checks that he cannot easily be seen from the ghost house or the track from the causeway. Over his shoulder, he can see only ruins. He begins to strip, the cold summer air like something solid. His mother’s ghosts. He shudders, drops his socks, his shirt, his jacket. He weighs them down with rocks so the wind does not take them out to sea.

  He takes a step into the water, then another. Rocks, sharp against the tender arch of his foot. He thinks of razor clams. Makes himself breathe (his body breathe). The thud of his body’s heart.

  The water reaches his knees, his waist, the tight muscles of his stomach. He takes a breath and contorts down under the surface. Again and again he ducks his body down, trying to understand what it is that Min finds here. Trying to claim a piece of it for himself.

  But there is only the sound of the sea, the murmur of his own tired thoughts.

  Him and his body, both in the water.

  Theo walks across the causeway, loaded with food from the market. The wind makes him stagger. He finds Luda taking photos of the flagstones of the doorway, so entranced that she does not notice him as he steps around her. Violet is sitting at the kitchen table, whittling driftwood into the shape of a small, human figure. She watches Luda with an indulgent expression. ‘You’re heaven sent,’ Violet says when she sees Theo. She rises to unpack the shopping bags. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. But thank you.’ He nods at Luda. ‘Nice to see her back out with her camera.’ Although he’s not entirely sure that the flagstones in the doorway constitute being back out.

  ‘She’s going to enter the photography exhibition,’ she tells Theo. ‘She says the flagstone there has a surprisingly lovely texture.’

  ‘It does,’ Luda murmurs from the open doorway.

  ‘Where’re the others?’ Theo asks Violet, because Luda will not know.

  ‘Min’s at Cassandra’s, I think.’ Violet sweeps her wood shavings into a neat pile on the table. ‘I guess Darcy’s in the caravan. Although I don’t think it’d be much fun in there with all this wind.’ Theo thinks of Darcy’s caravan, of being in there with Darcy. Darcy’s voice unspooling The Salt Boy with such care that the words don’t feel like so much of a violation. He might not have minded at all, if it had been Darcy who’d written the book.

  Theo steps outside, thinking to head for the caravan, but something moves in the corner of his eye, near the bay. A seal, he thinks. But no.

  Darcy. Darcy, wading out into the water, hands cupped forward slightly as though in supplication. The low sun catches him and the sight of him naked in the water is something Theo wants to remember for the rest of his life. He ducks under as though he’s searching for something long lost.

  Darcy.

  Theo walks towards the bay, still thinking of Darcy reading him The Salt Boy in the caravan. Trembling a little, Theo takes a deep breath and begins to strip.

  Darcy’s body breaks the surface of the water, lungs burning, vision glittery at the edges. He winces at the sight of Theo naked on the edge of the bay. He immediately turns away. Bewildered by Theo’s easy nakedness. A dazed thought: it is Theo’s hands that Theo keeps private, and he has always shown Darcy his hands.

  ‘Darcy.’ The word is snagged between them. Beseeching, almost.

  Darcy does not turn back, but something in his body must soften, because he can sense Theo stepping forward from his own pile of clothes. Darcy turns away from Theo because no good has ever come from it; this skin.

  Then he does look at Theo, the skin of his throat the colour of a scar. Those impossible, slate-coloured eyes. Theo glances away as Darcy climbs out of the water. With his fiery body, he does not, has never, seemed to feel the cold.

  It starts to rain again and a flock of cormorants take flight from the beach. Theo’s old shirt is taken by the wind – he does not think of things like weighing his clothes down with stones on windy days. ‘Darcy!’ he says, and points, so struck with the wonder of it that he does not realise that Darcy is already watching. The buck of its shape above the wind and rain-ruffled water. Darcy shivers. For a brief and flickering moment, he and his body are merged. Neither he nor Theo moves. They watch the shirt. They hold their breath. Then Theo reaches out a hand to touch Darcy’s cheek. Darcy flinches and turns towards the house. It is a while before Theo is calm enough to follow him.