Entry Island

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Sime’s immersion in the diary was suddenly broken by a security lamp coming on below his window and he resurfaced to the reality of the attic room in his sister’s house in Bury. He felt disorientated, and a little disappointed. He had no idea where events in the diary were leading, nor could he see what possible relevance they might have.

He stood up and leaned over the desk towards the window to peer down into the garden. In the light that flooded the side porch and the grass beyond it, he saw his sister wrapped in a coat and carrying a flashlight. She crossed the lawn towards the trees at the far side.

As the security light behind her went out, only the beam of her flashlight cut through the dark of the garden until another security lamp above the doors of the double garage beyond the trees poured light down on to the path and the turning area in front of it. She opened a door and disappeared from view. A few moments later a yellow light appeared in the attic window above the garage doors, and the security lamp extinguished itself to plunge the garden back into darkness.

Sime sat down again and returned his focus to the diary.

He scanned quickly through its pages, trying to get a sense of the story they told without becoming bogged down by their detail. His ancestor, it seemed, had gone on to great success, exhibiting his work in Quebec City and Montreal. His paintings, in the end, had commanded substantial sums of money. Enough for him to make his living by his art, which must have been rare in those days. But his art was popular. Immigrant Scots appeared to have had an unquenchable appetite for a piece of their homeland, and his ancestor had barely been able to keep up with demand.

It wasn’t until an entry made nearly fifteen years later, when his great-great-great-grandfather must have been about forty years old, that Sime found himself halted in his tracks by the opening line.