Konstantin did not sleep. Quite the contrary. As Candace stood at the bar, he considered going over to Isla’s, but remembered Iona’s ferocity and considered it a good idea not to. He was also very, very pleased he didn’t have a phone; the last thing he needed right now was to hear from his father about how he had somehow managed to bring even more disgrace on the family. Oh God. That was hellish in itself. It would be everywhere.
He’d just ignore it all. Presumably Gaspard wasn’t going to fire him—or even if he did, he thought defiantly, he could wash pots. He could find another job. Go out and seek his fortune. It hadn’t been bad here, not at all.
In fact, he thought sadly, he’d been enjoying it. Learning how to do something properly for the first time in his life. People liking him, really liking him, for himself, not for his money or his ridiculous house. He thought back to the camaraderie of the garage when they had built the statue, the patience (albeit laced with shouting) of Gaspard, taking him from knowing nothing to being actually reasonably useful. He’d been looking forward to the Christmas service, the first time to really stretch themselves at full mettle, to make a roomful of disparate people happy and warm and content. It seemed to him a rather fine way to live your life.
But now everyone was going to despise him, thinking he was just using their island to play Marie Antoinette, to pretend to be poor.
He hadn’t felt poor. But he felt every stare in the bar, every aggressive glance, as more and more people read and whispered about how he’d brought the island down.
In fact, here came the first person now. He stiffened, ready to defend himself, or if he couldn’t, at least take it.
It was Innes, whom he’d built the statue with.
“Well,” said Innes in his slow, careful way. “I see you’ve been shaking things up a bit.”
Konstantin winced. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“What about?” said Innes. “I don’t care that you live in a castle. Looks nice, if anything. And the statue is brilliant, so screw them.”
“But this might be really bad news for the hotel.”
Innes snorted. “I wouldn’t care about that. I don’t think Fintan wants anything to do with it and it’s killing Flora. I’d be happy if it fell in the sea.”
Konstantin smiled. “I like the way you think.”
They chinked glasses.
“How is Agot?” asked Konstantin. “Does she still hate me?”
Innes sniffed. “She hates everyone who tells her she can’t skate.”
“Have you got her ice skates?”
“There’s nothing to skate on, is there? All the water here is salt! Eilidh sent for some from Aberdeen, but they’ll be wasted.”
“It’s a bad Christmas for everyone,” said Konstantin, and they chinked glasses again sadly.
KONSTANTIN SMILED AT his kind friend, then got up himself and made his lonely way out into the dark, made miserable by how unhappy he had made his lovely little Isla, how the look on her face had cut him to the quick, how much he missed her, how everything was in ruins.
“Come on, angel,” he whispered in his native tongue as he crossed the great figure beaming out brightly across the water, as he trudged up against the wind to the northernmost point of the island and into his little aerie at the Rock, very happy to have Bjårk’s shaggy company. “Now I need a miracle.”
And it occurred to him that he would have to make an offering to the angel before he could receive anything, which was a strange thing to think, but it crossed his mind nevertheless. It had something to do with this place: the interdependence, the kindness of the people.
It struck him forcibly that it was December 23, the day he would have been celebrating Christmas back home in Norway.
The last few years had been stiff affairs: long dinners of lutefisk and ribs, often with worthy charity leaders of the region.
But he remembered long ago when Christmas was still the most exciting thing in the world, when his mother made a treasure hunt through the palace for him and all the local children, excitedly hiding wrapped gifts in every crevice. He remembered her singing, her happy pleasure as she went to parties, looking and smelling magnificent. The palace had been filled with what felt like thousands and thousands of sparkling lights.
Christmas was on the twenty-fifth here, and nobody had so much as known to mention that today was the real thing for him. Nobody knew.
And of course he hadn’t heard from his father—wouldn’t, now that he’d brought down even more disgrace on the family name.
He had come; he had done everything he had been told to do. He could even, grudgingly, accept that his father was right. And now, he had been forgotten.
It hurt, formidably.
On the empty road, as the angel faded behind him, he had never felt lonelier in his entire life, like the only man in a world that had turned very, very cold toward him.
The next day was the prep day for Christmas, and Isla, though waking up with a sore head, arranged with Gaspard that she would come in early for the first shift so she could leave early too and she wouldn’t overlap with Konstantin. When Konstantin came down the stairs, he was slightly terrified not to see her there, even after Kerry reassured him she had just worked an earlier shift, which wasn’t ideal either.
Chopping and prepping in a cold kitchen wasn’t remotely as much fun without his little companion by his side. Konstantin had the sinking feeling that nothing would.
He vowed to go find her after he’d finished. Explain to her . . . or at least try.
But it wasn’t all false, that was the problem. He had hated it here. He hadn’t wanted to stay.
Until he’d met her. But would she believe that? He thought again of those awful pictures of him and the models. Okay, he’d thought it was pretty funny at the time. But that wasn’t who he was now, wasn’t how he felt, not at all. Isla was special. He just needed to figure out how to show that.
LORNA WOKE, DETERMINED to do better today. Or at least finish it.
The surgery was empty, many people miraculously finding their symptoms improving as they prepared to stay indoors for a few days fortified with Quality Street sweets, telly, and the fire on. Jeannie was tidying up and trying to ignore the many, many boxes of chocolate that had landed there—Saif was ridiculously popular, but he didn’t want to take the sweets home, seeing as he neither had a sweet tooth nor had ever gotten used to the amount of sugar Scottish children ate and being keen to spare his children a similar fate—so now they littered the place up. Jeannie had been pressing boxes on people as they’d come in for being “good customers,” but unsurprisingly that had gone down very badly indeed, so she was going to swing past the community hall.
“Oh, hello, Lorna,” she said shrewdly, looking her up and down. There was patently not a thing wrong with the pretty teacher. “He’s not here.”
She realized immediately she’d said the wrong thing.
“Dr. Hussein, I mean,” she said, using his surname, which nobody ever did. “He’s just finishing up his last rounds before the holiday, topping up prescriptions, that kind of thing.”
“Of course,” said Lorna, her courage suddenly deserting her. She couldn’t bear looking foolish in front of Jeannie; she was terrified of giving herself away.
Jeannie, likewise, couldn’t bear the fact that she had guessed, seeing Lorna away every time Saif had booked leave, and busied herself with paperwork. Then something occurred to her. “Everyone’s been dropping off doctor presents! Have you got one too? Is it from the school?”
“Uh, yes,” said Lorna, grateful for a way out. “Sorry . . . we should have got you something.”
Jeannie gestured dryly to the piles of chocolates. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Lorna smiled. “Oh yes.”
She also had plenty of boxes piled up, along with some really not very helpful personally made artwork from children and—thank God—a bottle of island-made gin from the kind family at Rubhan Taigh, who had to make up for their five naughty redheaded chaps somehow.
SAIF SAT IN the car in the shadow of the parking lot, watching her leave. It took everything he had not to jump up, run out. When he saw her face as she left, so sad, and her hands deep in the pockets of her long student-y coat, and the red hair under a black velvet cap that made her look so young, so lovely, so undeserving to be so sad when happiness was always circling and never in reach, he wanted to run to her, grab her, who cares what the world saw.
He looked again at his phone. On his Facebook. Nothing.
WHEN HE FINALLY got back in, Jeannie handed over the little parcel from Lorna with a kind look that bypassed Saif completely. He held on to it as he went home, heated up the lasagna kind Mrs. Laird had left for him, and tried, completely unsuccessfully, to calm down a highly overexcited Ash. There would be presents tomorrow, then they were booked in to the Rock; Flora wouldn’t hear of them having Christmas on their own and had absolutely insisted. Of course it wasn’t entirely unselfish; she wanted the place filled with people she knew would appreciate it, plus Ash could keep Agot distracted, which could only be a good thing.
He looked at the sparkly tree in the corner, smiling again at the joy Ash had gotten out of it. Sighing as it marked another year without . . .
Well. He had driven himself crazy for so long. And she now . . . Had she had the baby? She must have. Or perhaps that photograph had been old, perhaps that child was growing up. Did he look like her other children? he wondered.
After the boys were finally asleep, he sat downstairs, feeling the silence weighing heavily on him.
He held Lorna’s parcel in his hands, found himself opening it, his heart heavy. He wished, more than anything . . . Well, what did he wish for? He was in love with two different people: one who was there, one who was not, and could never be again, but was still his wife, his legal wife. Sworn to him before God. Mother of his children.
At first he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at. It wasn’t possible.
It was the same—the exact same edition—of the book he had looked up online, for the message that may or may not have come from Amena.
This couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be real. How could she know? Could she have sent it? No, of course not, how could she have known about the crocodile? How could she have known? And Nizar Qabbani was a very famous poet, of course he was. Of course.
It was a coincidence, that was all.
The volume was beautiful, gold and bright blue. There was a bookmark in it, placed as if it could have been almost put in at random. But he knew, of course, that it had not been.
إذا كنت صديقي
ساعدني لأتركك
أو إذا كنت حبيبتي
ساعدني حتى أتمكن من الشفاء منك
لو كنت اعلم
أن المحيط عميق جدا . . . لن أسبح
If you are my friend
Help me to leave you
Or if you are my lover
Help me so I can be healed of you
If I knew
That the ocean is very deep . . . I would not have swam.
Saif sighed heavily. He got up and stared out the window. Just at the very edge of his vision he could see the beam of the angel statue light up the sky. He looked at it for a very long time.
Then he picked up the phone.
IN THE DEEP quiet of Christmas Eve, there were clusters of drinkers in the Harbour’s Rest still, mostly the young people home from the mainland to see their families, laughing loudly and boasting madly about their new lives in Inverness and Aberdeen, London and Edinburgh, while in homes mums and dads wrapped and lost Sellotape and begged excited children to sleep and cursed themselves for hiding gifts months ago and forgetting exactly where, and checked anxiously again to make sure they had enough roasted potatoes and tried to make their mothers-in-law comfortable in their beds while they arranged themselves on pullout sofas, and tried to hide the sherry from Auntie Morag, who got a bit maudlin this time of year, which was completely understandable, what with everything she’d been through, but even so, for the sixth year on the trot it was really bringing everybody down, and oh my God, did you see that thing in the Post online, what on earth were the MacKenzies going to do? And families rolled on with Christmas, some with the mixture of the sad and the sublime, and several hardy fellows made it to midnight mass and the Reverend Janey gave a lovely low sermon about never making the perfect the enemy of the good, which wasn’t strictly speaking in the Bible, but she always found it a very useful sentiment anyway at this time of year.
Nobody noticed a small redheaded figure slip out the flat door tucked behind the tiny museum, hop into the little hatchback, steal up the back road to the old manse (Reverend Janey much preferred her modern flat next to the church, with its triple glazing and gas central heating), park round the back rather than out the front, and steal, softly, to the back door, where she did not have to knock, because someone was waiting for her, had been waiting for her for a very long time, who said nothing but pulled her into the warmth of his body and the dark sweetness of his eyes, and in the quiet beating of their two hearts, they shared the deepest gift two people can share.