Page 51

The ship may not arrive on the exact day it is due, but apparently it’s usually only a day or so off on either side. Which means we have about a fortnight remaining on this island, and though we should all be joyful at the thought of escape, at the thought of this exhausting, stressful work coming to an end, we trudge through our days and hours like we are marching to our funerals. Dom and Fen still haven’t spoken, and I don’t know what will become of this family once we leave the island. Nor if I will ever see them again.

Which is exactly why I’m throwing a dinner party.

I send them all upstairs to their rooms while I do the cooking; they will hopefully take the opportunity for a nap. It takes me a few hours to get the last items in the oven and then I duck into the bathroom with the clippers. I haven’t touched my hair since coming to Shearwater; this is well overdue. I set the blades and start shaving, working from front to back.

Fen appears in the open doorway, watching silently.

“Dinner won’t be long,” I tell her.

She doesn’t speak until I’ve finished and am cleaning up the fallen hair. “I want to feel lighter,” she says softly.

I straighten, meeting her eyes in the mirror. I smile.

The thick, salty hair falls to the ground in heavy chunks. It is much more satisfying than shaving my own short hair. Fen’s perched on a stool before me, studiously not looking at her reflection, but down at her hands.

“I think it’s time for you to move back to the lighthouse,” I tell her.

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t want me here.”

“He’s grieving, but he’ll get over it.”

“We were broken even before the bonfire.”

“No you weren’t,” I say. “There’s shit to grapple with, I’m sure.”

“You don’t understand,” she says. “He won’t talk to me. When he looks at me he sees something damaged.”

I don’t ask what happened. If either of them wanted me to know they would have told me. Instead I find her eyes in the mirror. “No, kid. That’s what you’re frightened he’ll see.”

When all her long hair lies in tendrils on the floor, I use the clippers to tidy the edges, but I don’t linger too long. I can touch anything up tomorrow; it’s getting late, and we need to eat.

“Okay,” I say.

Fen takes a breath, and looks at herself. She gasps. Hands fly to cover her mouth. She looks every bit as wild as she used to, only now she looks fierce, too, and sleek. I wait, unsure if this reaction is good or bad. But she turns and hugs me tightly.

I hurry back to the kitchen to light a dozen candles. It’s really late now, and full dark.

“Okay,” I call up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready!”

They all but trip over themselves coming down.

“Oh my god,” Fen breathes.

Laid out on the kitchen table is our feast. I have cooked a roast chicken (which took days to defrost) and all the trimmings: platters of roast vegetables, stuffing and gravy, fresh bread, as well as a fettuccini dish with lemons and butter and capers for anyone who doesn’t want to eat meat. There is a cheesecake and mud brownies (favorites in my family, both of which I have made for Liv and Jay on every birthday since we were kids), and a bottle of wine, and a weird homemade lemonade I tried to make for Orly which is basically just a sugar syrup with frozen lemon cubes in it. Within the light of the sea of candles it seems almost mythic, this feast.

The family are dazed. I am not sure how Dom will feel about it, but we look at each other and there is something hungry in him.

“Your hair!” Orly points an accusing finger at his sister, staring wide-eyed at her skull.

“The bald twins look like they’re in a cult,” Raff agrees.

Fen and I share a glance and laugh.

“First we drink,” I say.

Instead of pouring the wine into cups, I take a swig right from the bottle and pass it around. “Let it stain your mouths and dribble down your throats,” I say.

Dom doesn’t say anything as Raff takes a gulp, but when Fen reaches for the bottle I feel him stiffen beside me, and I touch his arm to stay him. She is nearly eighteen and she deserves to be a teenager for a night. Fen takes a gulp and then passes it to her dad, who does the same, and Orly has his lemonade, which he says is the best thing he’s ever tasted, probably because he’s never tasted so much sugar. We keep passing the bottle until it’s gone, until it has stained our teeth and lips and chins.

Dom can’t help himself, he says with an ache, “The rations, Row.” Not just the food and drink but the candles, too, and the gas it took to cook all of this.

I say, “Fuck the rations,” and we eat, every last morsel of it, savoring our mouthfuls and moaning with delight. We eat until our bellies can’t take another skerrick, until we are, at long last, full. Then we sit back in our chairs and Dom and I drink sherry and we talk, and while Dom and Fen don’t speak directly to each other, there is an undeniable easing of the tension. As the kids chat I watch their dad’s eyes, I watch how that gaze moves between each of his children’s faces, I see the pride there, the swelling of his chest, the tiny quirks of his lips, the joy they give him. I think how lucky they are to have him, that it was into his care they were born. What a gift to be so well loved.

We decide we will take it in turns to each have one really long hot shower. There is a risk, of course, that the hot water will run out, so we spend time discussing who most deserves to go first and who should be last, and when we can’t agree on that we decide to draw straws.

“Is this what it’s like on the mainland?” Orly asks. “You can stay in the shower as long as you want?”

“Not really,” Dom says.

“Oh.” Orly looks sad.

“I dunno why you’re complaining,” I tell him. “The battle it takes to get you in a bath, my god.”

He giggles, then turns serious. “So. I was thinking about your snow gums.” He is looking at me.

“Were you now,” I murmur.

“I was thinking you’re gonna need help to replant them.”

Fen nods eagerly.

“And to rebuild your home,” Raff says.

I stare at the three kids.

My eyes and throat prickle. It’s the openness of them, and their generosity. It’s the thought of them entering my other life, my real life. Of meeting my sisters and their children. Of setting foot on my land, which is ash now but still mine, and so much a part of who I was. I feel impossibly moved by the three of them, I feel a thrill at the thought of offering this land to them, a place to keep them, to provide for them, but I am simultaneously overcome with the reality of the promises I’ve made, the obligations I am bound to. Dom is looking into his glass. He says nothing, maybe wishing as I do that things could be so simple.

We don’t clean up straight away, which is tantamount to a crime in this household. We leave the mess, leave carnage behind us, and I hand Raff his violin. He looks hesitant, but I say, “Something to call the ghosts,” and he understands, and nods.

I guide them all outside, into the windy night. It is dark still, but the nights here are so short that the early morning light is already starting to creep its way in.

“It’s cold!” Orly shouts.

“Then you’d better dance,” I say, and we do. All of us, even Dom. As Raff plays a riotous, endless song, we lift our arms and we spin and twist and twirl and jump, we make shapes of our bodies, we make languages of them. I see Orly on Dom’s shoulders, his hands lifted to the stars, giving great whoops of excitement as his dad runs in wide arcs. I see Raff stamping his feet as he plays with abandon, and Fen making him laugh so hard the music skips but only for a beat. I see a moment—a moment to make my heart falter—in which father and daughter stumble face-to-face and look at each other, I see them each trying to decide what to do, how to move through this moment, and then I see Dom reach for his daughter’s hand and spin her, I see him dip her low and I see her laugh. I close my eyes, drinking it all in, knowing it is a place in time that I will never forget. The world is dangerous and we will not survive it. But there is this. Impermanent as it may be.

I am certain I’m not the only one who feels the presences on the wind. All the hungry ghosts of Shearwater Island, come to dance with us on the hill.