Page 1 of The Elements

The first thing I do when I arrive on the island is change my name.

I’ve been Vanessa Carvin for a long time, twenty-eight years, but I was Vanessa Hale for twenty-four years before that and there’s an unexpected comfort in reclaiming my birthright, which sometimes feels as if it was stolen from me, even though I was complicit in the crime.

A few minutes later, I change it again, this time to Willow Hale.

Willow is my middle name, and it seems prudent to take a further step in separating the woman I am now from the woman I once was, lest anyone here makes the connection.

My parents were unremarkable, middle-class people—a teacher and a shop assistant—and there were some who thought them presumptuous in calling their daughter Vanessa Willow, which summons images of a Bloomsbury writer or a painter’s wan muse, but I was always rather pleased with it.

I had notions about myself back then, I suppose. I don’t have them any longer.

My next task is to shave my head. I’ve kept my hair shoulder-length and blond for as long as I can remember, but I purchased an electric razor before leaving Dublin and plug the device in to charge for half an hour before easing it around my skull, experiencing a feverish delight in watching the clumps tumble into the sink or fall on the floor around my feet.

Standing in the cascading tendrils of my femininity, I decide not to make myself entirely bald for that would draw too much attention, and I don’t have the head for it anyway, unlike the famous singer who looked like one of God’s angels when she first appeared on our television screens.

Instead, I shear myself down to the uncomplicated blunt crop of a hardworking country woman, someone far too busy to concern herself with indulging the physical.

The blond is gone now, replaced by a darkish gray that must have been lurking inside me all the time, like a benign cancer.

I wonder how I will look when it starts to grow out again and rather hope that it won’t.

The truth is, it would be more convenient if it just gave up the ghost with the cruel efficiency it inflicts on men.

I explore the cottage and find it suitable to my needs.

The photographs I saw online did not lie about its austerity.

The front door opens onto a living room that houses a kitchen.

Or, perhaps, a kitchen that houses a living room.

There’s a single bedroom with a single bed—how strange it will feel to sleep like a child again—and a small bathroom with no shower.

An unappealing rubber attachment is squeezed plumply around the tap spouts, and I pull it away, relocating it to a cupboard beneath the sink.

The roof must be sound, for there are no damp spots on the stone floor that have fallen from above.

The simplicity, the monastic nature of all of this, pleases me.

It is so far from what I am accustomed to.

When I first made inquiries of the owner, a man named Peader Dooley, I asked about the Wi-Fi, and he told me a pub on the island offered it but that very few of the houses had access yet and his was not one of them.

“I suppose that’ll rule the place out for you?” he asked, disappointment in his tone, for this was not the type of cottage to draw many offers, and certainly not for an open-ended lease.

“On the contrary,” I told him. “If anything, it makes it more appealing.”

When I turn on the taps, the water emerges brown at first before clearing its throat in the pipes and running clear.

I place my hand beneath it, and it is shockingly cold.

Taking a glass from the shelf, I fill it and drink.

I cannot remember when I last experienced such purity.

I drink more and feel something inside me spring to life.

I wonder, could a person get drunk on this water?

Moving from room to room, I check the light switches and am relieved that they’re all in working order since the island at night is sure to be darker than any place I’ve ever known.

The wallpaper is bleached of its color and looks as if it remains on the wall out of habit more than anything else; one good tug, however, and I imagine the sheets would fall away without complaint.

Something is missing, and it takes me a few moments to realize what it is: there is no television set.

I’m not disappointed. If I am to live this hermetic existence, then it is best that nothing intrudes upon it.

It will be a rare privilege to be so willfully ignorant of the outside world and all its nonsense.

There is, however, a radio, an old-fashioned one with an aerial folded down.

I turn it on but receive only static. Pulling up the copper spike, I rotate the dial and soon find myself tuned in to RTé Radio 1, where Joe Duffy is displaying admirable patience while interrogating one of his listeners about the latest indignity that has befallen her.

For years, I listened to Joe’s show every day, but I turn it off now.

Over the last twelve months, Brendan and I were the subject of debate on many occasions and, masochist that I am, I couldn’t stop myself from obsessively listening as strangers called in to denounce us both.

“And as for her,” they would say, vicious in their moral superiority. “Sure, you only have to look at that creature to see that she was in on it all along. Like attracts like.”

I’ve sworn that I won’t pay attention to these merciless commentators anymore, and so I remove the batteries from the device and bury them in different parts of the back garden, smoothing over their graves so I won’t be able to find them again.

Food. That will be an issue. The taxi driver, the only one on the island, a man named Mícheál óg ó’Ceallaigh, brought me and my suitcase from the dock to the cottage and told me there was a “grand little shop” only twenty minutes’ walk from where I would be staying, between the pub and the church.

The old pub, he added, not the new pub. I shall enjoy walking.

They say that exercise is good for one’s mental health, and mine is in a low place.

Right now, however, I’m not hungry, and, even if I was, Mr. Dooley must have an agent somewhere nearby, for a fresh loaf of bread has been left on the table and there’s butter, ham, eggs, and cheese in the fridge, as well as a small sack of potatoes slumped like a weary traveler by the front door.

When I unpack my suitcase, I’m surprised to find that I included a toiletries bag bursting with makeup, the zip straining against the pressure of a lifetime’s commitment to hiding the truth.

I don’t remember including it. Perhaps it was simply an unconscious gesture after years of packing for holidays and Brendan’s work trips.

I spill its contents onto the bed now and look them over.

There must be a thousand euros’ worth of deception here, promises of youth decanted into white tubes, glass bottles, and plastic containers.

I sweep the lot back into the bag and throw it all in the bin.

Rebecca, my younger daughter, would have a fit if she witnessed such waste.

Some years ago, when she was fourteen, she turned into something of an eco-warrior and was forever scolding me for throwing things away when there was still life in them, just as men do with their first wives.

Anyway, it’s no longer an issue for I intend to embrace a plain complexion here.

I’ll wash my face with soap, dry it with a rough towel, and let the elements do their worst.

I didn’t bring many clothes, so it doesn’t take long for me to hang them up in the wardrobe.

A few pairs of jeans. Some T-shirts. Underwear.

A couple of heavy woolen jumpers. I anticipated the Atlantic cold and rather liked the idea of walking along the cliffs like an actress in a television advertisement, staring out to sea and contemplating the ruins of my existence.

Only two pairs of shoes. The ones I’m wearing, which are really just a comfortable pair of trainers, and a second pair that aren’t much better.

I should have brought some hiking boots, I suppose.

I wonder if there might be a place to purchase some here, as I have no intention of returning to the mainland during my self-imposed exile.

If not, I will simply have to survive with what I have.

People always used to. Plenty still have no choice.

The front door is ajar, and a cat marches in, pausing for a moment in surprise, her front right paw held in midair. She stares at me in outrage as if I, and not she, is the intruder.

“I have a rental agreement,” I tell her, and her eyes narrow at my insolence. “Do you want to see it?”

I’m not much of an animal person and hope that she’ll take umbrage at this infringement of her rights and leave, but no, she simply emits a resigned meow before making her way to the armchair and springing onto it before promptly falling asleep.

Emma, my elder daughter, wanted a dog when she was a child, but Brendan claimed to be allergic, another assertion I never really believed.

The truth was that he valued order and felt that having any sort of pet around the place would lead to chaos.

Toys everywhere. Baskets. Water bowls. Urine on the floor tiles.

I regret that now. We only have our children with us for a short time.

It seems churlish not to give them the things they ask for, particularly when they’re asking for something that might love them unconditionally.

I allow my mind to drift to my ex-husband for a moment.

Well, he’s surrounded by chaos now, I tell myself, wondering whether I should smile at the irony but being unable to.

Although he’s technically not my ex-husband at all yet.

I just think of him that way. One day, I will summon the energy to speak to a solicitor, but right now I have had enough of the legal system to last me a lifetime, and, who knows, maybe he’ll die, or be killed, which would save me both the bother and the expense.

With nothing left to do in the cottage, I step back outside and look around.

It is a fine day, neither cold nor warm, without even the whisper of a breeze in the air.

There are a few other houses in sight, each one located at some distance from mine.

A dozen or more cattle and sheep dot the fields of my closest neighbor, whose farmhouse stands atop a hill, perhaps ten minutes’ walk from my door.

“This is where I live now,” I say aloud, and my voice doesn’t sound like my own.

Perhaps it’s something in the island acoustics, an inharmonious meeting point between water, earth, fire, and air.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve landed in such a place.

Earlier, on a whim, I checked the calendar on my phone to see where I’d been on this day last year, and it turned out to have been the morning that Brendan and I had an audience with Pope Francis in Rome.

The Irish Ambassador to the Holy See had introduced us, telling His Holiness that this was the great Brendan Carvin, who was known and admired the length and breadth of the country, and if Brendan had been blessed with feathers, he would have spread them wide and enclosed us all within his colorful train.

And this is his wife , the ambassador added a moment later, not deeming me worthy of a name, and I performed a sort of curtsy in the black dress I’d bought for the occasion in Brown Thomas, which hung between my knees and ankles, my face hidden behind a veil, presumably to protect the Pope from any temptation.

Francis’s was not the first papal hand that either Brendan or I had shaken—there were two others—but it will certainly be the last.

I look at my watch. Three o’clock now and already I’m not sure how I’ll fill the rest of the day.

I’ve brought a few books with me—classics, mostly—but amn’t in the mood for reading.

I’ll go to the shop, I suppose. Explore.

Build up an appetite and see what they serve in the pub, assuming they have a menu at all.

Maybe I’ll get drunk and dance on a table.

It would be quite something to be barred from one of the island’s two pubs on my first night here.

I remember my phone now and go back inside to retrieve it from my handbag, touching the screen to bring it to life, and to my surprise I have five full bars.

So, no Wi-Fi, but plenty of coverage. Opening my messaging service, I scroll to Rebecca’s name, rereading our last conversation, which took place more than a week ago, and glance toward the top of the screen.

With no regard for her privacy, it tells me that she is online.

I’ve arrived , I tell her. I’m on the island . And then, despite having no reason to believe this, I add: I think you’d like it here .

I send the message and watch as a gray tick appears next to it, then another. A moment later, they turn blue. She’s reading it. A rare moment when I know exactly what my daughter is doing.

The word typing … appears below.

She’s replying.

But then it disappears. She’s changed her mind.

The picture on her profile vanishes too. I know what this means. That she has blocked me. Temporarily, at least. She does this quite regularly, usually in the immediate aftermath of my contacting her, but I always wake the next day to find her picture restored.

I set the phone down on the table. There is only one more thing I need to do before I head to the village, and that is to take the small, framed photograph of Emma, Rebecca, and me from my suitcase and place it on the table, in full view of the sofa.

It was taken years ago when the girls were ten and eight respectively.

Brendan isn’t in it, of course. If he had been, I’d have burned it.

But he remains a presence, after a fashion, for he must have been the person behind the camera.

I consider smashing the frame on the floor and tearing the photograph to shreds, because of his ghostly presence, but if I do this, then I will have no pic tures of my daughters at all.

True, Rebecca will have restored hers by tomorrow morning but there’ll be no more of Emma in this lifetime.

My failures as a mother have ensured that.

“What do you think?” I ask the cat, who opens a lazy eye and, as if rethinking her earlier fearlessness, leaps from the armchair and marches out the door. I’m not far behind her.