Blue Lightning

Chapter Eighteen

Fran found Poppy in her bedroom, plugged into her iPod. She was lying on the bed, still in pyjamas, staring up at the ceiling. The curtains were drawn, so there was little light, but Fran saw a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, a dressing table covered with girlie debris – make-up and bangles, long strings of black beads. When she saw Fran come in, Poppy took the plugs from her ears and sat up, but she didn’t speak.

‘How do you feel about getting away from here?’ Fran stood close to the door. She didn’t want the girl to feel crowded.

‘Is the plane coming in?’ The urgency of the question made Fran realize how miserable Poppy was. She was hiding out in the bedroom, just waiting to make her escape from the island.

‘Not today. Tomorrow maybe. And the boat will certainly go in the morning. I meant getting away from the centre. I wondered if you’d like to spend the day with Mary and me.’

There was a hesitation. It took Poppy a moment to work through the disappointment that she wouldn’t be leaving Fair Isle immediately. ‘Sure,’ she said at last. ‘Why not?’

‘I’ll give you a minute to grab a shower, shall I?’ The girl could certainly do with a good scrub. ‘I’ll wait in the kitchen with Jane.’

When Poppy emerged she was wearing jeans one size too small and a long grey sweater. Her hair was still wet from the shower but she didn’t look very much cleaner. She hadn’t bothered with make-up and looked very young – an overweight child with an unhealthy pallor and poor skin. But we all looked like that when we were growing up, Fran thought. Or we believed we did.

She found herself thinking of Poppy as a slightly older version of Cassie. She needs some fresh air, a bit of exercise. ‘We’ll walk, shall we?’ she said. ‘We can meet up with Mary at Springfield for lunch. I need to stop off in the post office to buy some stamps.’ And perhaps Poppy was too tired to object or perhaps she was glad for someone else to take decisions for her, because she followed Fran out of the lighthouse without speaking.

They walked for a while in silence. Poppy was hunched in her jacket, her hands in her pockets.

‘What’s it like going out with the filth?’ The question came out of nowhere just as they were approaching the turn in the road by the North Haven, Poppy’s attempt to reassert herself or to provoke a reaction.

‘I don’t think of him as the filth. He’s a good man doing a hard job.’ Fran kept her voice easy. After all, some of her London friends had asked her the question in almost the same words. They lapsed again into silence.

Further south, Fran’s attention kept returning to Sheep Rock to the east. It had been painted and photographed many times, but something about the shape, the sloping green plane at the top of the cliffs, the way it dominated that side of the island, attracted her to it nevertheless. When Perez was a boy, they’d grazed sheep there; the men had gone over in a small boat and climbed a chain to get on to it. Would she be able to bring something fresh to the image? She’d asked Perez what she should give Mary and James as a gift. ‘Do a painting for them,’ he’d said. ‘They’d value that more than anything.’ She’d found nothing suitable to bring. Now she thought she’d draw something that would give her take on Fair Isle, on the iconic Sheep Rock. It would have to be in this light, she thought. Very clear, after rain.

She had the picture in her head, was so engrossed in fixing it there, that Poppy’s second question startled her. She’d almost forgotten that the girl was with her.

‘They all think I killed Angela, don’t they?’

‘I don’t know what they think.’

‘I hated her,’ Poppy said. ‘I’m glad she’s dead.’

‘It must have been hard, your parents splitting up. You were still quite young.’ But not as young as Cassie when Duncan and I separated and she seems to have survived. I hope she’s survived. The perennial guilt of the lone parent.

Poppy stopped in the middle of the road. ‘I didn’t hate her because she made my parents divorce. I mean, that was a pain. I thought my mum and dad were happy. But it happens all the time. I could cope with it. There aren’t many of my friends who live with both parents now. I just hated her.’

‘Why?’

‘She was a cow and she treated my dad like shit.’

Fran didn’t know what to say. She was curious, of course. For the first time she could understand Perez’s fascination with the detail of his work, this voyeurism into other people’s problematic lives. But really, what right had she to pry? She didn’t have the excuse of work. In the end, she didn’t have to say anything. Poppy was already continuing.

‘You know Angela only married my dad so she could get the job on the island? I mean, look at him. What else could she see in him?’

‘He’s kind,’ Fran said. ‘Understanding.’

‘He’s old and worn out. He wears corduroy trousers and cardigans. He’s going bald.’

Fran grinned. Poppy caught her eye and began to giggle too. Fran thought it wouldn’t be so bad having a teenage daughter. Mary drove down the road behind them. She stopped and shouted to ask if they wanted a lift back to Springfield.

‘We’re OK to carry on walking, aren’t we?’ Fran asked.

‘Sure.’ Poppy smiled again. ‘My mother’s always saying I need more exercise.’ Just like you.

‘Why were you so desperate to leave the island?’ Fran asked. ‘Was it just that you didn’t get on with Angela?’

There was a pause. ‘I used to love coming here when Dad first moved up. I mean, it was a sort of adventure. Mum would come with me on the train to Aberdeen and Dad would meet me there. We’d get the ferry. I was the youngest kid at home and always felt a bit left out, so it made me feel special to have that time with him. The overnight ferry, then the plane into Fair Isle. And Angela made more of an effort to get on with me then. She’d take me out ringing with her. Out in the Zodiac to count the seabirds.’

‘What went wrong?’

Poppy shrugged. ‘I guess I grew up. I could see how she treated my father. Like he was some sort of servant. He was a senior lecturer at the university, important in his own right, before he married her. She had no right to talk to him like that.’

‘So you hadn’t wanted to come to the Isle this time?’

‘They wanted me out of the way.’ Poppy’s voice was becoming shrill.

‘Who did?’

‘My mother, the school. I was becoming a nuisance so they decided to banish me to the far north. Like it was some sort of Russian prison camp. Like I’m some political fucking prisoner.’

Fran didn’t say anything. This is what Jimmy would do. He’d wait. She’s so angry that she’ll just keep talking.

A raven appeared overhead. Fran heard it croaking before she saw it and the noise made her shiver and remember past horrors, distracted her again from the girl ambling along beside her.

‘They don’t like my boyfriend,’ Poppy went on. ‘He’s older than me. Different background. They pretend to be open-minded, but they look down on him because he gets his hands dirty when he works and he doesn’t talk like we do. Just because his parents couldn’t pay for him to go to a smart school. They blame him because I lose it sometimes. But they’re the ones who make me angry. They make me want to lash out.’

‘Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to spend a bit of time apart.’ God, Fran thought, I sound like the agony aunt from a tabloid newspaper.

‘I’ve been trying to text him,’ Poppy said. ‘And phone him. But he hasn’t answered. He’s probably found someone else.’

Fran saw this was at the root of the girl’s misery. It had affected her more than Angela’s death and her father’s grief; she felt abandoned. She had been desperate to leave the island to find out why her older man was refusing to respond to her. When she was mooning in her bedroom, listening to depressing music and watching endless television, it was the man she was thinking of, not the violence of her stepmother’s death.

‘Angela knew,’ Poppy said. ‘She knew that Des hadn’t been in touch. She laughed about it: “What would a grown man see in you?” She didn’t do it when Dad was around, but when we were on our own she’d pick away at me: “Heard anything from the boyfriend yet? Still no news?” I think it drove me crazy. In the flat with the wind howling outside. Nobody to talk to. I dreamed of killing her. When it actually happened I could almost believe I’d done it, I’d wanted it so much. I was drunk and I couldn’t remember much about the night of your party. Perhaps it was me after all.’

She turned so Fran saw her face and realized how scared she was. She wanted a reassurance Fran wasn’t able to give. Fran tucked her arm around Poppy’s and they walked together into the shop. ‘Chocolate,’ Fran said in the no-nonsense tone she used to Cassie when she woke with nightmares. ‘That’s what you need.’

They sat on the bench outside the shop to eat the sweets they’d bought. ‘Do you have any idea who might have killed Angela?’ Fran asked. She couldn’t help herself. ‘You were there all day, every day.’

Poppy shook her head. ‘She was in a weird mood all week,’ she said. ‘I mean, even weirder than usual. Something was freaking her out. She treated them all like she did me – poking and prying. It could have been any of them.’

Later Fran and Mary distracted Poppy with long games of Scrabble and Cluedo. They sat at the kitchen table and at last could hear the sound of sheep and herring gulls over the wind. James was at the Haven supervising the return of the Good Shepherd into the water. In the croft, Poppy shrank back into herself and there were long periods of silence. She could have been sulking. It seemed to Fran that the girl switched from a woman to a child and back again in seconds. She wondered how any parent could deal with these mood changes. She could see why Poppy’s mother had needed a break.

At four o’clock Fran offered to drive Poppy back to the North Light. She hoped she might catch up with Perez there, even for a few minutes, and thought she was as star-struck about him as the girl was with her unsuitable boyfriend. But Poppy said she would walk.

‘Are you sure? It’s a long way. It’ll be almost dark by the time you get there.’

‘Like you said, I need the exercise.’

‘I’ll come with you then.’ Fran was already on her feet.

‘No,’ Poppy said. ‘I could do with some time on my own.’ Suddenly she became almost gracious. ‘You can understand how I feel. I’ve been trapped inside with all those people for almost a week. But thanks for today. It’s been great. A real help.’

Fran went out to the track and watched her take the east road past Kenaby. A small dark figure, the hood of her cagoule pulled over her head, disappearing into the distance. The light was beginning to fade and just before Fran lost sight of her, she was tempted to run after her. Perhaps she should have insisted on accompanying her back. Perez might disapprove of Fran allowing her out alone. But Poppy needed the chance to make her own decisions and Fran went back into the house.