Gala, as everyone called it, was a friendly enough place, but on the downward slide after years of decline in the textile industry. It had once been a prosperous little mill town. But most of the mills were gone, and it felt seedy now, grey and depressed.
The college itself had retained its reputation, and most of the designers, salespeople and mill managers in the Scottish textile industry went there. It was the career I wanted, but as I returned for that second year, I was not at all sure that I could stay the course.
It was doubly depressing going back to Gala after events at Linshader. I was still hurting, and haunted by the memories of the halcyon summer I had passed in the weeks before the poaching incident on Loch Four.
I had, however, brought numerous personal items to dress up my cell for this second year, and was in the process of pinning posters of Runrig and Deacon Blue to the wall when there was a knock on the open door. I turned to see Seonag standing grinning in the doorway. I’ve often heard the phrase You could knock me down with a feather. But if anyone had so much as breathed on me in that moment I’d have fallen over.
‘Surprise,’ she said. And if she saw my dismay she gave no outward sign of it.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Switched courses. Joined the second year at Gala. The Dough School in Glasgow was a drag. And, anyway, I didn’t really make any friends there.’ She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got the room right opposite.’
In other circumstances I might have been glad of the company, but right now Seonag was just about the last person in the world I wanted to see.
‘Oh,’ I said, without the least enthusiasm.
She retained her cheerful façade. ‘So we’ll have lots of time to spend together. I know how fed up you were here last year.’ She sauntered into the room, folding her arms and casting eyes over Donnie Munro and Ricky Ross. ‘Cool posters.’ And without taking her eyes off them, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Ruairidh.’
‘No.’
‘Good riddance, eh?’ She turned towards me. ‘So are there any decent pubs in Galashiels?’
I don’t know how much she was aware of it, but I spent the next few weeks doing my best to avoid her. I took up running so that I had an excuse to get out on my own. Or I would simply tell her that I was studying and couldn’t be disturbed, shutting myself away in my cell. Of course, I couldn’t avoid her in class, or in the canteen, when she would invariably come and sit beside me. In a crowd, when a bunch of us would go to the student union, I would involve myself in conversation with one of the other girls as a discouragement to Seonag, and happily chat to any of the young rugby players who would come into the bar after matches at weekends.
Seonag was, as usual, Miss Personality superplus. The best-looking girl on the course. There were very few boys at the college, but I noticed how their eyes always seemed drawn in her direction. And the Gala boys would fall over themselves to buy her drinks in the pub, in return for which she seemed happy to flirt outrageously.
More than all that, I noticed how popular she was with the other girls. There would always be gatherings of them congregating around her in the common room, laughing and whispering. Or walking together across campus in giggling groups. Squeezing into a booth at the pub. A sisterhood from which I felt excluded. It seemed then that she was the one avoiding me, rather than the other way around.
We were two months into the term before I got my first real insight into something I had never even suspected. And when I look back on it now, I realize how naive and innocent I must have been.
At the weekends, when a lot of the girls went home, those of us left would often go to a pub called The Salmon. There was a rumoured connection between the owner and Linshader Lodge, where it was said he had once worked as a ghillie. Whether or not that was true I couldn’t say, since I never met the man. But it was a comforting sort of link with the island.
It was one of those bright, cold November Saturdays, with a haze of frost on the grass and a mist on the hills. A group of us had gone to the pub after lunch and sat there drinking all afternoon. There was an international rugby match on the telly. Scotland versus someone or other. I didn’t know, or care. I had never been turned on by rugby, but wouldn’t have dared give voice to my indifference here, of all places. It would have been like denouncing God from the pulpit of the Free Church.
I remember that Seonag had been there when we arrived, but she was gone by the time we left. I hadn’t noticed her leaving. I had been feeling sorry for myself, with the prospect of another month before the Christmas break and the chance, finally, to go home. As a result of which I had drunk more than was good for me and was almost overcome by melancholy. The prospect of another Saturday night sitting reading alone in my cell was very nearly unbearable, and I decided that maybe it was time I gave Seonag another chance. In truth, although I was the one who had started out avoiding her, it was me who was now feeling excluded. Time to address all those things that had come between us. The misunderstandings and petty jealousies.
So it was with an alcohol-fuelled courage and determination that I climbed the stairs to the girls’ floor and walked along the hall to Seonag’s door. I hesitated, resolution deserting me only for a moment, before I knocked once and walked in.
At first, I didn’t really understand what I was seeing. And the moment passed so quickly I couldn’t be sure in the immediate aftermath that my eyes had not deceived me. An English girl called Jane, who had also been with us earlier in the pub, was lying naked on Seonag’s bed, dark hair splashed across the pillow. Seonag, too, was naked, lying on her belly between the other girl’s legs, Jane’s fists tightly clasped around bunches of Seonag’s burnished red hair. Milky white bodies impossibly conjoined.
They broke apart immediately, startled by my sudden appearance, and sat up, grasping at sheets to cover their nakedness. I was so taken aback I had no idea what to say. I felt the colour rising on my cheeks, and stammered something stupid like ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.’ And closed the door quickly as I stepped back into the corridor.
I stood breathing hard for a moment, trying to process what I had just seen. Then hurried back along the hall to the common room, and slipped inside, shutting the door behind me. The other girls had not yet returned, and I stood there trembling and dreading the thought of having to face Seonag alone. How naive had I been never even to suspect? And, yet, nothing in my God-fearing sheltered island upbringing had prepared me for such a moment. I had no idea how to deal with it. It seems ridiculous to me now, in the wake of all the years of experience I have clocked up since. But I was shaken to my core.
I heard a door opening and then closing further down the hall. A knock. And then silence. Before soft footsteps came hurrying along the linoleum. I stepped away from the door as it opened, and Seonag stood there with her dressing gown wrapped around her. Bare feet, tousled hair, bright spots of red high on her porcelain cheeks. She pushed the door shut behind her and her green eyes sought mine, imploring, filled with fear and longing. I found it impossible to maintain eye contact and looked away towards the floor. She reached out to grab both of my arms. ‘You really didn’t know?’
I forced myself to look at her. ‘No.’
She sighed heavily and seemed distraught. ‘My poor, innocent Niamh.’
‘It’s disgusting!’
She let me go and stepped back, almost recoiling, as if from a slap. ‘No, it’s not! It’s the most natural thing in the world if that’s how you feel.’ I could see the emotion bubbling up inside her. ‘All those times cuddling together in the bothag with the dollies, playing mums and dads. All those nights in the same bed, sharing the heat of our bodies, arms around each other for comfort.’