She jumped from a ring of crumbling peat on to a gentle slope descending to the shelf where she and Ruairidh had built their bothy from the stones of John Nicholson’s first house. It always, somehow, came as a surprise to her. Stone the same colour as the cliff, heaped around the face of it in a low round building that seemed almost subsumed by it. Perfectly camouflaged. She knew, from walkers who had come knocking at their door, just how difficult it was to find if you did not know exactly where it was.
A wall curved around one side of it, protecting and leading to a stout wooden door jammed shut by a boulder. She pushed the stone aside with her foot and unlatched the door to step inside.
She was struck at once by the warmth of the air, and the smell of peat smoke. There were two windows in the curve of the outside walls, and two triangular skylights in the roof, and so there was plenty of light to see by. She stooped and stepped down into the circular floor area, where a stout central wooden beam held up the roof.
A wooden bench sat below the far window, and to her left a wooden platform at waist height served as a table, or a bed for anyone with a sleeping bag who wished to stay overnight.
In the opposite corner they had built a tiny fireplace against the wall, with tin cowling to prevent smoke from seeping into the room. Niamh knelt now by the fireplace and felt the warmth that resided still among the ashes. She turned to look across the interior of the bothy. Beneath the bed lay a plastic bag that Ruairidh usually kept full of dried peat slabs. It lay on its side, most of the peat gone. All that remained of it, black crumbs and dust, strewn across the flagstones.
It was an inescapable conclusion. Someone had been here. Very recently. Maybe even earlier today. And perhaps for a day or two before that. Ruairidh’s peat was almost exhausted.
Niamh stood up and looked around for other clues. But there was nothing alien to be seen. No litter or belongings left behind. No cigarette ends. Had it not been for the burning of the peat, you would never have known that the bothy had been occupied.
She felt the first stirrings of disquiet, remembering the footfalls behind her in that dark Paris street. Then waking in the night to the sounds of what she thought was someone moving around the house. She had seen nobody since returning to Taigh ’an Fiosaich. Not a soul, except for the visitors who had arrived by car. And yet it was perfectly possible that some late-season walker had sought refuge here for a night or two without her being aware of it. That, after all, was its purpose. And she could not see the bothy from the house.
For some time, then, she sat on the bench by the window and marvelled at how effective this little stone hut really was at shutting out the weather and the sound of it. Perched here, beneath the lip of the cliff, its tiny windows looking out on to the mercurial Minch, a miniature protective bubble to keep you safe. I’ll keep you safe, Ruairidh had told her. But he hadn’t. Unlike the bothy they had built. That was still there, and probably would be long after she too was gone.
She got stiffly to her feet and made her way back outside, to be met by a blast of cold air, and the roar of the sea breaking over rocks far below. She fought to shut and latch the door, then push the boulder back against it, before setting off on the narrow path that led along the broken exterior of the cliff face before turning down in a steeply zigzagging natural stairway to the hidden beach at the foot of it.
The sand was wet and firm, and strewn with shells. The force of the sea against the cliff behind it had hollowed out a space that might one day, eons from now, become a cave. Niamh kicked off her wellies and rolled her jeans up to the knee, to walk barefoot across the sand, feeling it fill all the spaces between her toes. And then clamber carefully over slabs of gneiss worn smooth by time and water. She found a favourite perch and sat there, dangling her feet in the crystal-clear water of a rock pool. It was icy cold, and she could only hold her feet in it for a short time before pain forced her to withdraw. Still, it felt good. Cleansing, somehow.
The sea broke against shell-crusted outcrops of rock just feet away, to send rivulets of foaming salt water among all the crevices. She felt the spray of it on her face in the wind.
It was hard to believe now that she and Ruairidh could ever have made love here. And yet on a fine summer’s day this little hidden beach would bask for hours in sunshine, and in the evening, sheltered from the westerlies by the cliffs, the sand would still be warm, and the water almost tempting. But within half an hour, she knew, the tide being swept in by a heavy swell from the Minch would break across these rocks and swamp the beach.
She sat for as long as she dared, holding on to every elusive memory, with the very real fear that they might all soon be swept away by time and false recollection, and lost in the incoming tide of an uncertain future.
By the time the first waves were breaking over her feet, the light was starting to fade, and would quickly be gone. She had left it too late to climb back to the top in daylight, and it was panic that propelled her across the beach to retrieve her wellies, and clamber upwards over the rocks.
Twilight was the worst of all lights. Car headlamps seemed to make little impression in it, and the human eye coped almost better with illuminated darkness. She was only halfway up when she found herself having to peer carefully through the gloom to find her next footing. She fumbled in a pocket for her phone. She had a torch app that would light her way. But the beam of light it cast was not much better than the little natural light that remained, and she picked her way carefully along the ledge that overhung the beach and the rocks now thirty or forty feet below.
The wind had increased in strength, and whistled around her as she eased her way towards the scree slope that would allow her to scramble upwards to the safety of the bothy and the cliff tops beyond. She felt it tugging at her jacket, and then a noise immediately above caused her to look up, startled. The shadow of a figure silhouetted against the sky seemed to extend a helping hand. She reached up and felt the hand make contact with hers, before it grabbed her collar and pushed her violently away from the cliff face.
It was with a dreadful sense of disbelief that she found herself falling, all sense of orientation lost, her phone and the light it cast whipped away in the wind. And realization dawned that she was going to die. Her shoulder struck some protruding rock where a tiny patch of grass grew and seabirds nested. The pain of it jarred through her body, and she felt herself propelled out into the void, dropping helplessly into the breaking spray of incoming water.
She closed her eyes tight shut and braced herself for impact. She surely would die quickly on the rocks. But it was water she struck, hard and cold, expelling all breath from her body as it sucked her down and pulled her out into the Minch.
It felt as if her whole being were in the grip of a giant hand that she was powerless to fight against, dragging her under, spinning and twisting her amidst a turmoil of conflicting currents. All she could think was, ‘Don’t breathe! Don’t even try to draw breath. Or it will be your last.’ Lungs filled with water, darkness drowning consciousness. Life slipping hopelessly through fingers incapable of retaining their hold on it.
She opened her eyes and sought the light. Only to find darkness. She had no idea which way to the surface. Except that her wellies had filled with water and were pulling her down. Bubbles of spent air escaping her lips and nostrils were going up. She fought to divest herself of her wellies, and the leaden weight of her sodden parka, and kicked hard with her feet, thanking God now for the swimming lessons her parents had forced her to attend in Stornoway.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, she broke the surface and saw light in the sky above her. For the first time she understood the absolute dread that Anndra must have felt as he was sucked under for the last time and gave up the unequal fight to stop water rushing into his lungs. She sucked air into her own lungs now, desperate for oxygen, before a wave broke over her and she found herself thrown towards the rocks.