I'll Keep You Safe

Chapter Sixteen

Seonag and I had been inseparable as kids, but something changed between us the minute I’d shown an interest in Ruairidh. And it was a while before I figured out that she was after him herself.

It wasn’t obvious at first. I’d thought that maybe she was just jealous, afraid of losing me to some boy. After all, at that age girls and boys kept themselves pretty much to themselves. The hormones hadn’t started playing havoc with our emotions just yet.

But now that we were into our teens things were a little different. Ruairidh was fifteen and had already gone to the Nicolson where, by all accounts, he was the school heart-throb. I was frustrated to be stuck, still, at Shawbost.

Gone was his mullet, replaced by a Rick Astley haircut, short back and sides with a thick quiff on top. He was still tall, but had filled out by now, and was playing for the school rugby team. He had acquired a leather bomber jacket from the army surplus store in Stornoway, which he wore to death, along with drainpipe jeans with the knees out. He was the epitome of cool.

I had sprouted, too, and was taller than Seonag, and very proud of my budding breasts. My figure was still a bit too skinny and boyish for my liking, but there was a sense now of womanhood just around the corner. Clothes hung well on me, and I had let my blonde curls grow long, tying them back at times in a ponytail that hung halfway down my back, at other times leaving them to cascade freely over my shoulders.

Seonag, to my annoyance, grew even more beautiful as we passed into our teens. She had one of those classic hourglass figures, with boobs that drew every boy’s eye, and a face that might easily have launched a thousand ships. Only on Lewis, they would have been fishing boats or trawlers, and the fishermen would have been interested in more than her face. She still looked much older than me, and although I was more confident within myself these days, in her company I definitely felt like the frumpy friend.

Her plan to take Ruairidh away from me — although it has to be said that he was a long way from ever being mine — began with a process of running him down. Trying to diminish him in my eyes with a litany of half-truths and downright lies. Had I heard about him getting drunk in Stornoway and being driven home by the police in disgrace? Did I know that he was going out with the captain of the hockey team, and had allegedly been caught having sex with her in the locker room? And one time, when he showed up at the youth club with a split lip and two black eyes, she told me confidentially that he’d been in some kind of a fight at school. I later learned that he had acquired his injuries playing rugby against a team from Inverness. Which taught me to take everything Seonag told me about him with a pinch of salt.

The community hall at Balanish was where the battle lines were first clearly drawn and the initial skirmish took place.

The hall, as we grew older, had become the centre of our limited lives. It was where we spent our Saturday nights, at a youth club run by some of the older village kids. When I say youth club, there was nothing formal or organized about it. It was usually one of my brothers who got the keys and opened up the hall for two or three hours on the Saturday evening. The boys played five-a-side football in the main hall, while the girls crowded into a room at the back, listening to music and gabbing about inconsequential things. Like clothes. And boys. And, more recently, make-up. We were always home by around eleven, and certainly before midnight. The sabbath, which began on the stroke of twelve, was inviolate. And any kind of activity beyond then, youthful or otherwise, was strictly forbidden.

Which was why the discos were always held on the Friday. In fact, they didn’t usually start before midnight, after the older ones had got back from a night out in Stornoway.

It was a funny thing, I’d noticed, that the closer a village was to Stornoway, the more worldly the kids seemed. As if proximity to the ‘big city’ somehow bred sophistication. Way down in Balanish, we were like country yokels. And, then, when we were old enough to go to Stornoway with our friends on a Friday or Saturday night, we felt positively cosmopolitan, even if all we did was hang about the Narrows in the rain and drink beer.

I was still just thirteen when my parents first allowed me to go to the Friday night discos, and only then because Uilleam and Anndra were going. Anndra, by now, was the DJ. And he was good at it. He was a handsome boy with a shock of sandy curls, and an easy way with him. His craic always got folk laughing. Girls like boys who make them laugh, so he was popular with the opposite sex.

Any time I went, Seonag would go, too. She always stayed over at our house and shared my bed. The first few times we went, there was no sign of Ruairidh, and I began to think that he regarded the local disco as beneath him. I’d heard he went to Stornoway most Fridays with a group of older boys from Shawbost who had a car.

Then one night in November there he was. He and a group of boys I didn’t know. Disco night usually wound up at around 3 a.m., and Ruairidh and his pals didn’t arrive until after 1.30. You sensed a frisson of excitement among the girls when they came in. But the boys were playing it very cool, standing along the back wall, smoking and drinking beer from cans.

Anndra had recently acquired coloured lights that flashed in time with the music. And so blue, red and white light flashed intermittent accompaniment to the thump, thump of every track. Seonag and I had spent most of the night dancing with each other, handbags at our feet, in the absence of invitations from any of the boys. Now, along with all the other girls in the hall, we were anxious to be noticed by the newcomers.

For the first time, it seemed to me, in all the years since he had rescued me from the bog, Ruairidh Macfarlane finally caught my eye. I looked away immediately, both embarrassed and anxious not to seem too keen. When I stole another glance I found his eyes still turned in my direction. To my astonishment he smiled, and I think my heart rate went off the scale. I snuck a quick look at Seonag and almost recoiled from the animosity in her glare. She had noticed Ruairidh and me making eye contact, and her nose was well and truly out of joint.

I turned to look at Ruairidh again and very nearly fainted when I saw him pushing his way through the dancers in my direction. I’m sure I blushed bright red when he said, ‘Hi, Niamh, haven’t seen you for ages. Want to dance?’ And I was grateful to Anndra and his coloured lights for hiding my embarrassment.

I tried to sound as if I was doing him a favour. ‘Sure.’ And made certain there was as little eye contact as possible during the dance itself. I was aware of him staring at me, and felt myself blush again each time I flicked a glance in his direction. I remember that the song Anndra played for that dance was Michael Jackson’s ‘Dirty Diana’, and I focused all my attention on singing along to it, in the certain knowledge that Ruairidh wouldn’t be able to hear me. Just see my lips moving. I didn’t have much of a voice.

When it ended, I gave him a smile, almost relieved that it was over. He nodded and drifted off into the haze of cigarette smoke caught in the lights. I turned to find Seonag still giving me the evil eye. We resumed our dancing around the handbags for the next couple of songs. I recall Maxi Priest’s version of an old Cat Stevens song, ‘Wild World’. And Deacon Blue’s ‘Real Gone Kid’, with everyone pointing in the air and singing along with the ‘ooh-ooh’ chorus. Strange how such things stay in the memory. But really I was just treading water till Anndra played the smoochy song at the end, and hoping that Ruairidh would ask me to dance for that one. I would have the chance at last to put my arms around him and feel his body next to mine.

Seonag had disappeared off to the loo when Anndra announced the final song of the night. It was the Phil Collins hit, ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, from the film Buster, and I just about melted at the thought of closing my eyes and surrendering myself to Ruairidh’s arms. I tried to catch sight of him, to meet his eye and convey somehow that I was ready for this. But to my dismay it was one of his friends that I saw approaching through the crowd. Not an ugly boy, but he had acne spots around his mouth, and greasy-looking hair, and he wasn’t Ruairidh.

He smiled awkwardly. ‘Dance?’

I had one frantic last look around for Ruairidh, but there was no sign of him, and I submitted to the inevitable. I shrugged as indifferently as I could. ‘Okay.’ And to his disappointment immediately adopted the waltz position, keeping my body as far away from his as I could.

It wasn’t until well into the song that I saw Seonag in Ruairidh’s arms, resting her head against his shoulder, for all the world as if they had been going out with one another for weeks. They swayed together in slow unison, and neither of them glanced once in my direction.

I felt sick, and angry, and humiliated, and I have no idea how I managed to keep dancing until the end of the song. The lights came up, and amid a sprinkling of applause, those couples who had formed a union for the night headed quickly to the door, recovering coats and hats and scarves on the way out. I looked around for Seonag, but there was no sign of her. Her handbag had gone. No sign of Ruairidh either. His friend stood uncomfortably in front of me for a moment or two, as if he thought I might take his arm and head out with him. I threw him the most fleeting of smiles. ‘Thank you.’ Then retrieved my handbag and hurried for the door.

Kids in gangs and couples and singles streamed down the hill towards the war monument, warmth and smoke rising from them like steam in the cold November air. It was a clear night, I remember, the blackest of skies studded with stars. There was, for once, no wind, and frost lay thick on the tarmac, glistening on every blade of grass.

I stood at the top of the hill, wrapping my coat around me for warmth, and scanned the bodies making their way carefully down the slope, everyone holding on to everyone else for fear of slipping on the frost. And there they were. Ruairidh and Seonag. Hand in hand, nearly at the bridge by now. Even from this distance I could hear them laughing, imagining that it was me they were laughing at. Or about. I cursed myself for being so damned cool during that first dance, and turned to head off in the other direction towards home. Only to find Uilleam walking gingerly by my side.

‘Where’s Seonag?’ he said.

‘In hell I hope,’ I growled at him. And in spite of the frost and the risk of slipping, I ran the rest of the way home, tears turning icy to burn my face as they tracked their way down my cheeks.

My folks were long in their beds by the time I got back, so at least I didn’t have to face them. I slammed my bedroom door and undressed quickly, slipping beneath the cold covers to curl up foetally on my side, sobbing my anger and hurt into the pillow.

Of course, I couldn’t sleep. Not before Seonag returned, and even then it was hours before I finally drifted off. I heard her coming in, softly shutting the door behind her. The rustle of clothes as she undressed before climbing into bed. I kept my back turned, fighting the urge either to cry or to punch her. Hopefully she thought I was asleep.

To my acute irritation I heard her breathing grow shallow, and then the soft purr of sleep as she drifted off long before I did.

When we got up in the morning not a word was said about the night before, and we never once discussed it in the weeks and months that followed. Though as far as I was aware nothing, in the end, ever came of it.

It was five years later that Seonag and I next came into conflict over Ruairidh. By then we had already started growing apart and had barely seen each other during our first year away from the island, studying at different colleges on the mainland. As it turned out, for me at least, this time provided the straw that well and truly broke the camel’s back.

Both of us were lucky enough to secure summer jobs at Linshader Fishing Lodge at the mouth of the river Grimersta on the south-west coast of Lewis. The lodge was just a few miles south of Balanish, but they were live-in jobs because of the unsocial hours we were forced to keep. Having won prizes in home economics in fourth and fifth years at the Nicolson, I was allocated the position of cook’s assistant. Seonag was put on the housekeeping rota, which was kept on its toes by a lady from nearby Linshader village who used to leave Pan Drops, a classic Free Church white mint sweetie, in hidden places around the lodge so she could check that the girls were cleaning everywhere.

I was lucky, working in the kitchen, that I could just wear jeans and T-shirts and an apron. The housemaids had to wear kilts and black blouses. Seonag hated it. We shared a room, but during the day had very little contact because of our very different duties.

The lodge was a grand old place dating back to Victorian times and built in the early 1870s. It sat right down on the shore of Loch Roag, at the mouth of the river, a long two-storey white building. The hill that rose behind it was covered in Scots pines planted in the nineteenth century by the island’s then owner, James Matheson, who’d made his fortune selling opium to the Chinese. What today we would probably call drug-running, but back then appeared to be the respectable pursuit of lords, admirals and prime ministers.

It had recently been extended at the north end, and against the south gable stood a long green-roofed shed that housed the ghillies and the watchers.

It had an atmosphere all of its own, that place. Sometimes mired in the mist that would drift in off the water on a still morning, or lost in the smirr that dropped down from the moor. I came into the loch once on a boat just as the sun was coming up, and mist like smoke rose up all around the lodge in the early-morning light, moving wraithlike among the trees. The water itself was alive with salmon breaking the still surface as they headed in from the sea on their journey upriver, and otters played around the stone slipway. It was magical.

Nothing magical about the hours I kept, though. Up at the crack of dawn, first to serve tea to the guests in their beds, then a cooked breakfast in the dining room before they headed off with packed lunches prepared by me and the cook to spend the day fishing somewhere up on the water system. The lodge accommodated sixteen guests, very often members of the syndicate that owned it, or their friends. Wealthy folk. Judges and newspaper editors, successful businessmen and Tory peers. Folk the like of which I had never come across before, but all of whom, nearly without exception, treated me with the greatest generosity and kindness.

I have very fond memories of the summer I spent at that lodge. I got my education there, too. I had known nothing of writing rooms and wine cellars. And although it seems hard to believe now, I had never even tasted wine. I remember one morning doing a nosey and wandering into what they called the writing room, thinking that all the guests were out fishing. To my surprise, there was an elderly gentleman sitting at the roll-top bureau scribbling in a large notebook. I apologized immediately and began to back out. But he insisted I stay, poured me a coffee from the pot, and asked me all about myself. At first I was shy, but he put me so much at my ease that before long we were sharing laughs and inconsequential secrets. At some point the housekeeper had come in to take away dirty cups, and afterwards she cornered me in the kitchen and said, ‘Do you know who you were talking to in there?’

‘Well, no,’ I said. And in truth I had never even thought to ask his name, although he seemed to know mine.

‘That was the poet laureate,’ she said in hushed tones. I later looked him up in an encyclopaedia to discover that he had been recommended for the job by the Prime Minister, and appointed by the Queen. These were circles I was not used to moving in at Balanish.

The girls all went to bed for a few hours in the afternoon, before getting up again to prepare afternoon tea when the ghillies brought the guests back from the fishing at five. And then we served dinner at seven-thirty following three loud strokes on the gong.

We were six girls in all, and the housekeeper, of course. Including the gamekeeper, there were four ghillies and four watchers. The watchers mostly slept during the day, and were out at night and the early morning keeping an eye open for poachers. When Seonag and I arrived there were only three ghillies. The fourth was yet to arrive. An experienced lad, they said, who had been coming for several years now.

He turned out to be Ruairidh Macfarlane.

I had only been there a few days when I discovered a lodge tradition. It was my birthday, and I suppose it was probably Seonag who told everyone, but that evening before dinner, the boys all came looking for me.

The cook knew what was coming, and there was a grin all over her face when the ghillies and watchers came trooping into the kitchen. ‘Come on then, Niamh,’ the gamekeeper said to me. He was an older man, a face like leather after years at sea. They called him Staines after a character in a TV series called Captain Pugwash that was years before my time.

‘Come on where?’ I said.

‘It’s bath time.’ One of the boys grinned at me, and the others had trouble stifling their laughter. I was not getting a good feeling about this.

I tutted and shook my head. ‘I’m busy.’

‘Told you she might take a bit of persuasion,’ the gamekeeper said. ‘Right, then, boys.’ And to my absolute indignation they marched right in and swept me off my feet.

Big strong boys’ hands all over me hoisting me into the air and carrying me shouting and kicking all the way down the hall and out of the front door. The other girls were gathered there, and some of the guests, all smiling in anticipation.

‘Put me down,’ I screamed, trying to wriggle free of their grasp. But it was hopeless. And they marched me over the gravel to the slipway and down to the water’s edge. I realized suddenly what was coming and struggled even harder to free myself. To no avail. They swung me once, twice, three times through the air, before launching me out over the water.

I landed with a smack on its still surface, and the cold nearly took my breath away as I went under. It wasn’t deep here, so I was able to scramble quickly to my feet, rising up out of the water like Aphrodite to stand waist-deep, drenched, my hair hanging in a sodden web all over my face. Everyone began singing ‘Happy Birthday’.

It was only as I scrambled up out of the water, to a chorus of laughter and cheers, that I saw Ruairidh standing there for the first time. Grinning. My white T-shirt was virtually see-through when wet. Fortunately I was wearing a bra. But I felt as if I was standing in my underwear, exposed and humiliated.

I ran off into the house, gales of laughter following in my wake.

I didn’t see much of him over the next few days as I settled into the routine of the lodge. They were long, hard days, but sleeping in the afternoon meant that we were all wide awake once dinner had been served, the tables cleared and the dishes done.

The weather was pretty lousy that first week, wet and blustery, which none of the fishermen seemed to mind. But it meant we were stuck in the lodge at night, either the girls in their tiny lounge off the kitchen, or all of us together in the boys’ green shed, talking, smoking, listening to music. Ruairidh had been assigned to train up the new watchers, so he wasn’t often there.

Then suddenly, the following week, summer arrived, and as soon as we were able to escape our duties in the lodge, we would all troop down to a tiny beach hidden beyond the headland, where we were out of sight and hearing of the guests.

We lit fires from driftwood to keep the midges at bay, and sat around in the flickering glow of the flames, talking and laughing, drinking beer and vodka, and sometimes one of the boys would produce a chunk of cannabis resin that we would break up and ‘cook’ in silver paper to smoke with tobacco in rolled-up joints.

It was about halfway through that week that Ruairidh first showed up with his guitar. He was finished training the new boys, and he sat cross-legged with his back to the dunes serenading us with ballads and rock classics, and pop songs that everyone knew and sang along to.

I remember those nights as being special. I didn’t participate much in the singing, or the craic, but sat there with the fire in my eyes watching Ruairidh as he played and sang, and I think perhaps that’s when I realized that I was in love with him. Not some childhood infatuation, or passing fancy, or even gratitude for the moment when he had saved my life all those years before. But with an ache somewhere very deep inside me, and a longing that I could barely contain.

Seonag, by contrast, was the life and soul of the party. Every fancy-dress night and silly escapade was her idea. She joked and flirted with the boys and was the envy of all the other girls. I watched how she eyed up Ruairidh in a sleekit sort of way, green watchful eyes peering out from behind her fringe. But whatever had happened between them that night after the disco, he showed no interest in her whatsoever. Neither, it has to be said, did he demonstrate the least interest in me.

Until the night that Seonag retired early to her bed, suffering from a streaming summer cold. There were only a handful of us down at the beach that evening. Ruairidh and his guitar, another of the ghillies with one of the housemaids who had become an item, and the cook.

I sat with my back to the sea, listening between songs to the sound of its breathing. I remember someone once telling me that the sound of the sea was like the sound we hear pre-birth, of our mother’s blood passing through us. And that’s why we are always drawn to the ocean. Like a return to the womb.

I didn’t even notice the ghillie and his girl drifting off along the shore until the cook stood up and said, ‘Time for bed. An early rise in the morning.’ As if it wasn’t always. And suddenly it was just me and Ruairidh sitting round the fire, looking at each other across the embers. He must have been twenty then. A young man. He had broadened out, and not having shaved for several days had the beginnings of a beard adding definition to a fine-featured face.

He smiled, patting the sand on his right, and said, ‘Come and sit beside me.’

My heart was very nearly in my mouth as I shuffled around the dying fire and squatted cross-legged in the sand beside him. I think it was the first time in our lives that we had ever been alone together.

He had the most enigmatic smile on his face as he turned to look in my eyes. ‘Fancy a smoke?’

‘Sure.’

He laid the guitar aside and delved into a pocket, producing a small silver tin box containing several roll-ups. But they were no ordinary roll-ups. He lifted one out and grinned. ‘Here’s one I made earlier.’

I laughed. We had both watched Blue Peter as kids. Though I doubt if any of the presenters had made anything quite like these earlier. At least, not on screen. He lit it and took a long pull, drawing smoke deep into his lungs and holding it there for several moments before exhaling suddenly and handing me the roll-up. I saw the embers of the fire reflected in blue eyes that seemed so dark on this light night. I drew long and deep before handing it back.

There was the faintest of breezes blowing in with the tide. An almost full moon gave inner light to the slow swell of dark green ocean as it broke white along the sand. I could feel the warmth of his body next to mine, and we sat there without a word, caressed by the half-dark, and smoking his joint until it was done. He threw the dout on the fire. It flared briefly in a fleeting, flickering flame, then vanished. Ruairidh reached then for his guitar and played me the most beautiful song I think I had ever heard. I found out only much later that it was an old Beatles song, ‘Here, There and Everywhere’.

He sang it slow and soft, a voice like velvet, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes gazing dreamily out across the water. When he finished he turned to look at me for the first time. Our faces were very close, and he leaned over on one elbow to kiss me. Had we not been smoking earlier, I might have rushed it, or pulled back too soon. As it was I just closed my eyes and lost myself in it. In the softness of his lips, the warmth of his tongue, the not unpleasant jag of his whiskers. I tasted smoke on his breath, and the sweetness of alcohol. It all seemed like the most natural thing in the world. As if everything in my life up until then had only ever been to prepare me for this moment.

When finally we drew back I saw that his pupils were dilated. He said, ‘I’ve wanted to do that ever since I saw you nearly drown up on the Pentland Moor.’

I gazed at him in disbelief. ‘Liar.’

‘It’s true. I’d never even noticed you at school before then. I don’t know why. I remember lying along the plank and looking into your eyes. Feeling your total dependence on me in that moment. And it was the first time I’d ever felt the desire to kiss a girl.’

I felt indignation rising in my breast. ‘Well, I’d never have guessed it from the way you totally ignored me afterwards.’

He shrugged and turned his eyes away towards the incoming swell. ‘That’s difficult to explain. I suppose I was a bit ashamed of the things I’d felt. Embarrassed. None of the other boys seemed remotely interested in girls. I didn’t want to be any different.’

‘And at the disco that time?’

He turned, frowning. ‘What time?’

‘You don’t even remember, do you? About five years ago. We danced, and I was waiting for you to ask me for the last dance of the night. But you asked Seonag instead, and you both went off together at the end.’ I had carried the hurt and humiliation of it somewhere deep inside for all these years.

His eyes opened wide in amazement. ‘It was you that didn’t want to dance with me.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘That’s what Seonag said. That you fancied my friend Derek, and were hoping he’d ask you for the last dance. So he did.’

I felt my jaw slacken.

‘And I asked Seonag instead. Then afterwards, when we’d left together, she didn’t really want to know. We hung about, talking, down at the bus shelter until I was freezing my bollocks off. Then it was a quick peck on the cheek and she was off.’ He pursed his lips in regret. ‘I thought you hated me.’

I felt the deepest, trembling sigh suck itself from my chest and closed my eyes. ‘That little bitch!’ Then I looked at him very earnestly. ‘I told her nothing of the kind. It was you I wanted to dance with.’

He started to laugh, then, and let his head fall back, directing his mirth at the vast firmament overhead. ‘Jesus. To think of all the wasted years!’ He stood up suddenly and held out his hand to pull me to my feet. ‘Are you tired?’

‘Never been more awake in my life.’

He grinned that infectious grin of his. ‘Want to go out in a boat?’

‘I’d love to.’

‘Better get some decent footwear, then, and a jacket in case it gets cold. I’ll meet you with the Land Rover at the back of the green shed.’

Seonag was deep asleep, snoring like an old man, when I snuck into our room to fetch my Hunter’s green wellies and my parka. Ruairidh was waiting with the Land Rover, and didn’t seem concerned about waking anyone as he started up the motor and drove us off towards the gatehouse and the single track that led to the main road. We turned south-west, then, on the B8011 until we passed the Bernera turn-off on our right, then swung left on to a track that only a 4×4 could handle, heading due south along the west shore of Loch Ruadh Gheure. Moonlight reflecting on still, black water followed our lurching progress up the water system. Ruairidh laughed. ‘You know what this loch is called?’

‘Ruadh Gheure,’ I said.

‘No, it’s Loch One. There are four lochs on the system, and they’re all called by their number. Every landmark on all the streams and lochs has its own English name. Daft things like Fish Bay, and Pyramid, and Alligator and Auburn Point. All because the English can’t pronounce the Gaelic.’ He laughed again. ‘Mind you, most Scots couldn’t pronounce the Gaelic either.’

It didn’t take us long to reach the end of the road, and the boathouse at the top of Loch Two. There, Ruairidh dragged a 15-foot wooden boat down a short slipway into the water and we both clambered in. He yanked twice on the starter cable of a Tohatsu outboard and the engine exploded noisily into life, the sound of it echoing away across the hills that grew out of the twilight.

I cringed at the noise. ‘Won’t someone hear us?’

‘Who? There’s no one out here, except for maybe a couple of poachers, and you can bet your life the watchers are fast asleep in the bothy at Macleay’s Stream.’

The initial roar of the motor settled down into a more gentle purr as Ruairidh guided us south along the loch, shattered moonlight dispersing in the luminescent wash we left in our wake. ‘Is it bad, the poaching?’ I had heard stories.

He nodded grimly. ‘At times, yes. Used to be that no one really minded the locals taking one for the pot, but it’s gone way beyond that now. Some of the poaching on the water up here is almost industrial. They’re casting nets across the waterways, catching dozens, if not hundreds of salmon. They have taxis waiting for them at road-ends, and the boots get packed with fish on ice and driven off to Stornoway. From there, who knows where it goes. But there’s a big international market for fresh-caught wild salmon.’ He looked as if he might be about to spit his disgust out on to the water, then changed his mind. ‘Trouble is, at this rate there’ll not be any salmon left for anyone. The estate’s not far from all-out war with the locals.’

‘But the estate’s taking the fish, too. And charging big money for it. What gives them the right to fish the waters when the locals don’t?’ I felt a certain indignation rising in my chest. I knew that my own father was not beyond a bit of poaching himself.

‘Aye, but the estate manages the water system, Niamh. They have a hatchery down on Loch Roag, and a policy now of returning caught fish to the water. The emphasis is more and more on conservation these days.’

We motored the rest of the way in silence, then, and I watched in wonder as the landscape changed all around us, growing more rugged and mountainous. There was daylight still in the sky, with the moon washing its light across the land, scree slopes and rocky shorelines traced in silver. At this time of year it would never get fully dark, and I remembered being in Ness one June at a family wedding when I saw the sun rise in the east barely moments after it had set in the west.

Macleay’s Stream was a short stretch of managed white water between Loch Two and Loch Three. There was no sign of life in the bothy, a stone-built dwelling with a tin roof that sat in the cradle of the mountains rising steeply now out of the valley. Ruairidh said, ‘Either they are sleeping or out patrolling. Whichever it is, we don’t want to disturb them.’

We berthed the boat at the mouth of the stream and followed a track on foot that led us along the path of Macleay’s to the foot of Loch Three, where we clambered into another boat and headed deeper into the wilderness. Past landmarks to which Ruairidh attached names like McKillop’s Point and Braithwait’s Cairn.

We changed boats again at Skunk Point, and motored south in splendid isolation, beyond Summer House and Cheese Rock, into some of the most inaccessible wilderness in the whole of Scotland. The air was cooler now, and I was starting to feel the chill. So I sat at the back of the boat, leaning in to Ruairidh, who had one hand on the tiller and the other around my shoulder.

I realized how completely I had surrendered everything to him. Out here I was so far beyond my comfort zone, or ken, that all I could do was put my trust in him. And to me he seemed strong and knowledgeable and wholly at ease in his environment. So surrender felt good. I knew he would keep me safe, as all these years later he promised me he would.

He pointed towards the dark shape of an island looming ahead in the water. ‘That’s Macphail’s Island. There’s a lunch hut there. We’ll stop for a bit, and light a fire if you’re cold.’ We could see the mountains of North Harris cutting jagged lines against the sky in the distance. Tomnaval. The Clisham. Ruairidh said, ‘There are two rivers that run into the head of Loch Four here, both from Loch Langabhat. One day I’ll take you up there. It must be the most beautiful spot on earth, Niamh. You can see pairs of golden eagles circling way up above the mountain tops, and red deer that come right down to the water’s edge. And if you ever want to feel like there’s no other human being on this earth, then that’s the place you need to go.’

I wasn’t sure why I would ever want to feel so alone, but I would happily have gone there with Ruairidh any time he wanted.

The lunch hut was half wood, half stone, with a sloping leaded roof. It sat on a rocky outcrop, with steps cut into the rock leading up from a tiny jetty where Ruairidh tied up our boat. With so much moonlight reflecting off water, and so much daylight still in the sky, it felt more like day than night.

Ruairidh pushed open a wooden door with a leaping salmon painted beneath a small square of window. The hut smelled damp and fusty, intended only as a shelter for fishermen to eat their packed lunches while out fishing the system. Ruairidh said, ‘Sometimes a watcher will overnight here.’ And he stooped to open up a cupboard and take out a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. ‘We’ll take these to keep us warm.’

We trekked across the tiny island then, to a sheltered inlet with a pocket-handkerchief patch of fine shingle, and he laid out the sleeping bags before gathering wood to light a fire.

‘Back in a few minutes,’ he said. And I saw him in silhouette returning to the hut, before emerging with a rod and a bag and vanishing across the island.

I sat for what felt like a very long time, watching fish out on the loch jumping clear of the water to catch insects, leaving rings that circled endlessly outward, cutting and cross-cutting each other until they broke upon the shore. If there were midges around, then the heat and flames of the fire kept them away. The air felt soft to me, and I took off my parka and kicked off my wellies. I had the strangest feeling in my belly, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies animating it. I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my shins, rocking slightly back and forth. There was the strongest sense permeating every part of me that my life was about to change for ever. And I was, at the same time, both scared of it, and desperate to embrace it.

Ruairidh returned with a live trout. He killed it with a sharp blow to the head then crouched to gut it on a rock. From his sack he took a roll of tinfoil, a lemon and two portions of wrapped butter. He parcelled the trout up in the tinfoil with a slice of lemon and a portion of butter, and wedged it carefully among the embers of the fire. He sat down beside me. ‘A few minutes. I hope you’re hungry.’

‘Starving.’ And I was.

He reached for his sack and pulled out a bottle of white wine and two plastic cups. ‘Not as chilled as it might be, but it’ll do.’ He took out a corkscrew and opened the bottle.

‘You’ve certainly come equipped,’ I said. ‘Do you do this often?’

He grinned. ‘First time. But I have been planning it.’

‘Oh have you?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, one should always be prepared.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, should one?’

‘I was a Boy Scout.’

‘That would explain it, then.’ I tilted my head towards him. ‘I suppose your pal and his girlfriend, and the cook, were all well primed to leave us on our own at the fire.’

He just smiled.

When he gauged that the fish was ready, he scooped it out of the ashes with a couple of sticks and opened up the tinfoil between us. The smell that rose up with the steam was delicious. He unfolded a knife from his pocket and carefully separated the fillet from the bone, before lifting up the tail and delicately removing the whole spine and head. ‘Just fingers, I’m afraid.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Is that okay?’

‘I never use anything else.’ He laughed, and I discovered that I liked to make him laugh. He poured us each a glass of wine. We chinked plastic and I took a mouthful of soft, fruity Chardonnay that tasted like the best thing that had ever passed my lips. Until we turned our attention to the trout. There was not the slightest smell of fish rising from the firm, succulent flesh, slick with butter and lemon juice. It was, quite simply, the best fish I had ever tasted. If I could recreate that moment, I would relive it a thousand times.

When we had finished it we washed our hands in the loch, freshening our mouths with more wine, and settling in close together on the outspread sleeping bags.

‘Did it live up to expectations?’ I said.

He looked at me, surprised. ‘What?’

‘That first kiss you’d been dreaming about all those years.’

He was very serious. ‘More than.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d like to try it again? Just to make sure.’

He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek, and then his thumb gently across my lips. I kissed it, before he leaned in to find my lips with his. Soft and warm, the taste of Chardonnay still on his tongue. The butterflies in my tummy went into hyperdrive as I felt his hands on my shoulders, gently laying me down on the softness of the sleeping bags. There was no invitation required. Neither did he seek or need permission.

Within minutes we were naked under the moon, making love for the very first time, and I knew that what I had taken for love on the beach at Linshader Lodge had not deceived me.

It was my first time, and although I wasn’t going to tell him that, I think he’d probably worked it out. They say the first time can be the worst time. For me it was amazing, and only ever got better. I never, from that moment, wanted anyone else in my life.

When we were finished and lying breathless on our backs gazing up at the faintest of stars in a sky that was as dark as it would get, he turned his head to gaze at me with an intensity that was almost frightening. Then he said, ‘Well, I’m glad to see that the hunter — gatherer approach still works.’

And I clattered him as he burst out laughing.

We got back just as the day was beginning at the lodge. The cook was already in the kitchen, and I hurried up to my room to change. Seonag was awake, but still lying in bed without any intention of getting out of it that day. Her eyes and nose were still streaming, and her voice had almost gone. It was obvious that my bed had not been slept in.

‘Been out all night, then,’ she said. A statement, not a question.

I wasn’t feeling particularly well disposed to her after Ruairidh’s revelations about what she had said to him at the disco. ‘None of your business,’ I said curtly, and I saw her face flush with anger, and maybe hurt.

‘Finally got it together, then, you two?’

I slipped into clean underwear and pulled on fresh jeans and a T-shirt. I could shower later. ‘No thanks to you.’

She had gathered her composure again, and drew it around her like the sheets on the bed. ‘I wonder what your folks are going to say when they find out that you’re going out with Ruairidh Macfarlane.’

I turned to glare at her angrily. If she was trying to puncture my happiness, she was succeeding. But I didn’t want to let it show. ‘I don’t care what they say. I know they’ve always blamed Ruairidh for what happened, but they’re wrong.’ And I stomped out of the room. We never spoke about it again. But Seonag was in a huff with me, and I couldn’t be doing with it. Within a week I had swapped rooms with another of the girls who seemed happy to share with Seonag, and I barely spoke to her for the rest of the summer.

Seonag aside, the next few weeks passed in a dream. I couldn’t wait to finish work each night to spend the rest of it with Ruairidh. Sometimes we sat down at the beach with the others, weather permitting, singing around the fire. Some nights we wandered off along the shore. We found a tiny island that was only accessible at low tide. There were the remains of an old blackhouse on it and we would light a fire among the ruins and Ruairidh would sing and play just for me. We had our own name for it, Eilean Teine, or Fire Island. More than once we were caught out by the incoming tide, having to pull up our breeks to wade back across to the mainland.

When the weather was fine we made the return trek up to Macphail’s Island and the tiny shingle cove where we’d first made love. There we explored each other’s bodies and lives and got to know each other as well as two young people could. For the longest time, Ruairidh told me, he had been planning a career as a gamekeeper, working at Linshader Lodge every summer, with the intention of taking a gamekeeping and wildlife management course at an early incarnation of the University of the Highlands. Then, at the last minute, his brother Donald had persuaded him to follow in his footsteps, taking a business studies course at Aberdeen University, with the prospect of a job afterwards in the oil industry. I got the strong impression, even then, that it was a decision he regretted. We take these decisions that will forever change the course of our lives at an age when we are least qualified to make them. Ruairidh was born for a life out here in the wilderness, but it was destined never to be.

I told him all about my ambitions to work in the clothing industry. But also of my unhappiness, even after just a few days, with my choice of textile college at Galashiels, in the Scottish Borders. Too far from home without friends. Forced to remain in the student halls of residence while the girls from Glasgow or Edinburgh went home at weekends. I was dreading going back for another year.

For both of us the summer at Linshader was an escape from all that. An idyll that we could never have imagined in the months preceding it. But happiness so intense can’t last. And it was mid-August when an incident on the water system changed everything.

It was one of those perfect summer nights. The world had turned a little by now, and it was getting darker earlier. Though there was still light in the sky, the stars stood out like crystal studs. The Milky Way was like breath misting on glass. A gibbous moon shed its colourless light across the hills, and almost everyone was gathered around the fire on the beach.

Our sing-song was interrupted by Staines, the gamekeeper, and one of the watchers, a sixteen-year-old lad called Calum. Calum had spotted a party of poachers out on the top loch, not far from Macphail’s Island, in the basin where the Langavat River ran into the loch, opposite a rock called Gibraltar.

‘If we’re quick we’ll catch them,’ Staines said breathlessly. ‘They’re laying nets. I want all the ghillies with me. The rest of the watchers are waiting for us up there.’

To my disappointment, Ruairidh was on his feet in an instant and heading off with the rest of the boys. They were quickly swallowed up by the night. I had grown so used to spending my nights with him and sleeping all afternoon that I was at a complete loss. The prospect of passing the rest of the evening round the fire with the girls was less than appealing, particularly in the company of Seonag, whom I had been assiduously avoiding. So I got up and said, ‘Might as well have an early night, then.’ I didn’t wait to see if anyone else was going to join me, hurrying off back up the path to the lodge.

My body clock was not accustomed to my being in bed this early, and I lay awake in the dark for what seemed like hours. I was aware of my roommate coming to bed around midnight, but didn’t let on I was awake. Within minutes I heard her slow, steady breathing as she slipped off to sleep long before me.

I had a tortured night, tossing and turning, drifting in and out of dreams until the alarm went at six.

I saw Ruairidh briefly after breakfast, when we were handing out the packed lunches to the guests. He looked grey and tired and just shook his head when I raised an eyebrow in query. I was anxious to hear what had happened.

There were rumours among the girls, of course, during the day. About some kind of violent confrontation and arrests by the police. But it wasn’t until that night that I got the full story. As soon as we could, Ruairidh and I slipped off along the shore and made the slippery crossing over seaweed and stones to Eilean Teine. The night was still warm, but midges swarming around the old ruin forced us to light a fire. By its flame I watched Ruairidh’s face as he recounted what had happened the previous night.

‘It was a bunch of teenagers,’ he said. ‘A couple of lads from Balanish and, we think, three from Bragar. But we only caught the one.’ He shook his head. ‘They hadn’t a clue what they were doing. I think one of them had been out with some real poachers and thought he knew how it was done.’ He blew air in frustration through pursed lips. ‘Their net was full of holes for a start, and they had no real idea how or where to lay it. Just lads out for a bit of a lark, really.’

‘What happened?’

‘They didn’t even know we were there until we jumped them. There was a bit of a rammy in the dark, and four of them went haring away across the hills. I caught the other one. I always wondered if my rugby days would serve any purpose in real life.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I brought him down with a beauty of a tackle, shoulder in behind the knees. He fell like a sack of tatties. It wasn’t until we got him to his feet that I realized who he was.’ He dragged his eyes away from the flames where they had been replaying the events of the night before and looked at me. ‘You know him, too. He’d have been in your year. Iain Maciver. Lives just down the road from me.’

I nodded. I knew exactly who he meant. A thickset boy, dark hair cut in the classic Lewis fringe, dividing his forehead laterally in half. Not the best-looking lad, but bright. My age. Just eighteen. I’d heard he’d got himself into Glasgow University, studying Gaelic. He was known universally as Peanut, because of his predilection for the Reese’s Peanut Cups they sold at Woolies in Stornoway. Which were the probable cause of the spots that had gathered themselves around his nose and mouth and forehead during his early teens, leaving him now with badly pockmarked skin.

Ruairidh returned his eyes to the flames. ‘So Staines insists on calling the police. Peanut’s begging him not to. It’ll mean a criminal record, something that could affect him for the rest of his life. I pulled Staines to one side and said we could just give him a bollocking. Put the fear of God into him. He’d never do it again. But Staines didn’t want to know. He had a real ugly look on his face and he said to me, “These fuckers need taught a lesson!” And that was it. We took the boy back down to the road and the cops were waiting for us.’

‘That’s pretty shitty,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘It was. And I’m sure Peanut blames me. I was the one that brought him down.’ He shook his head then, frustration and anger etched all over his face. ‘And the worst of it is, I’ve been hearing all day how Staines himself is in with the real poachers. A lucrative wee sideline. Just rumours, mind. But it would explain why he was so keen to warn off anyone else.’

‘Jesus! Do you think that’s true?’

‘I don’t know.’ He breathed his helplessness at the night. ‘But what I do know is that the boy’s been charged. He’ll appear at the Sheriff Court in Stornoway, and I’ll probably be called to give evidence. It’ll bring shame on his family. My neighbours. And could well ruin his chances of getting a job in the future. Employers don’t like kids with criminal records.’

The whole incident cast a gloom over the lodge in the days that followed. Ruairidh was more subdued than I’d known him all summer, and I saw him on several occasions being short with Staines. Had he been able to verify the rumours I believe he might well have been tempted to put his fist in the man’s face. Then one evening he said to me, ‘Let’s go up to Macphail’s Island.’ We hadn’t been for some time, and I think it was Ruairidh’s way of trying to break out of his depression.

It was not the best of weather. There was low cloud, and a light smirr blowing down off the hills. We had to wear our waterproofs for the trip up the water system, and it was hard to see with rapidly fading light and no moon.

It was too wet to sit out once we got to Macphail’s, and so we huddled together in the lunch hut, drinking wine and saying very little. A comfortable, comforting silence. A shared sadness that needed no words. Just understanding. We smoked a couple of joints, held hands and kissed, but sex was never on the agenda for either of us. And it was not long after midnight when we set off in the boat again to head back to the lodge.

Ruairidh had to navigate us into the slipway at Skunk Point by the light of a torch. We had just clambered out of the boat and were pulling it out of the water when half a dozen shadows detached themselves from the darkness. A group of youths who had been waiting for us in the still of the night. I was knocked backwards into shallow water and screamed as the group of young men surrounded Ruairidh. I scrambled to my feet and saw him fighting like fury, but he was hopelessly outnumbered. They dragged him down to the ground, and boots went pounding into his stomach and chest and back as he curled up to try and protect himself. I screamed again, wading out of the water and throwing myself at his attackers. Punching, kicking, until an elbow in my face brought light flashing in my eyes and knocked me back off my feet.

I grabbed on to the side of the boat and saw that Ruairidh’s torch was still lying inside it. I reached in to snatch it and fumble with the switch. Suddenly I was directing the glare of its light on to Ruairidh’s assailants, and they stepped back, arms half-raised to shadow their eyes. I recognized almost every one of them. Boys I had been at school with. Including Peanut. They seemed startled, and frozen in the cold light of my recognition. But Peanut stepped boldly forward. ‘Since when did you become a traitor to your class, Niamh Murray? Siding with the fucking toffs.’

I felt anger spiking up my back. ‘Maybe about the same time you became a fucking thief, Iain Maciver.’ I looked around the faces. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are. Every last one of you!’ My voice was shrill, and I could hear it echoing back off the hills.

Peanut said, ‘You breathe a fucking word of this to anyone...’

‘And you’ll what?’ I screamed back at him. ‘Make things worse than they already are? You stupid bloody boys.’

They almost seemed chastened, shrinking back from my anger. Except for Peanut himself. He turned to look at Ruairidh still curled up on the ground, and sank his boot in one last time. ‘That’s for ruining my life, you bastard!’ he shouted, leaning right over him and spitting on his prone form. He nodded to the others and as they turned away they were absorbed by the night just as quickly as they had appeared.

By the time Ruairidh got to his feet I could see blood on his face, and vomit on the ground where he had lain. He brushed aside my helping hand and marched off into the dark, following the well-worn track along the banks of the stream that led down to Loch Three. I struggled to keep up, and couldn’t get a word out of him all the way back to the lodge.

Ruairidh wasn’t the same after that. He spent the remainder of our stay at Linshader Lodge, it seemed, trying to avoid me. I never knew whether it was the humiliation of taking a beating in front of me, or being branded a turncoat for siding with the toffs. Or maybe guilt at the part he had played in ruining Peanut’s future. Whatever was ailing him, he had no intention of sharing it with me. I almost started to believe that he blamed me for everything that had happened.

The change in his mood and demeanour was marked. He would turn up sometimes at the bonfire on the beach without his guitar, the worse for drink. He was smoking a lot of dope, and went off quite often at night with the watchers. I think he spent most of the remaining weeks of the summer sleeping up at the bothy at Macleay’s Stream. We never passed another night together.

Of course, Seonag could barely conceal her glee. She would make a point of sitting talking to him those evenings he turned up on the beach, glancing in my direction to make sure I was watching. And I remember her once coming into the kitchen to inform me that, anyway, I was better off without him. It was with clear satisfaction that she said, ‘My folks tell me that the Macfarlanes are outcasts in Balanish these days. No one’ll talk to them because of Ruairidh getting Peanut arrested.’

I turned and almost spat in her face. ‘It wasn’t Ruairidh that got him arrested. It was that bastard Staines. And everyone knows he’s in with the poachers.’

Seonag’s eyes narrowed and she lowered her voice. ‘You’d better watch yourself young lady. You could get into big trouble if people hear you talking like that.’

‘Oh, yes? And you’d be the one to tell them, I suppose.’ I had long suspected that someone had tipped off Peanut and the Balanish boys that Ruairidh and I were up at Macphail’s Island that night. And I wouldn’t have put it past Seonag being the one to do it.

She put on her hurt face and her little girl’s voice. ‘We used to be friends,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s happened to you.’

Me? I wanted to shout at her. Me? You’re the one that’s changed! But I said nothing as she turned and retreated into the lodge like some wounded animal.

It was about a week before the end of our stay at Linshader that my mother took ill. A recurrence of shingles, that awful rash with its accompanying nerve pain and headaches. The doctor put her on antivirals and she retired to her bed. I had to excuse myself from duties at the lodge and return home for a couple of days to cook for my father and Uilleam, who was still at home then, and do their laundries. It never ceases to amaze me how hopeless men are at looking after themselves.

As it happened, I was able to get everything done during that first day. It was perfect drying weather, and I had all the laundry washed, dried and folded away in cupboards and drawers by teatime. The rest of the time I spent cooking. Meals that could be reheated and served at any hour that suited them. I had intended to stay overnight, but as it turned out there was no need. Uilleam drove me back to the lodge and I arrived shortly after ten.

It wasn’t the warmest of nights. I sensed a change in the weather. Those seemingly endless summer days of warm sunshine and gentle breezes were already beginning to feel like a distant memory. The summer never seems to last, and the older you get the shorter it becomes, like the days themselves. While the winter stretches endlessly ahead towards some far-off and uncertain spring. The change comes in a moment and you detect it immediately. Like the first faint stab of pain in the sinus that presages the onset of a cold.

I dumped my stuff in my room. There was no one at the lodge, except for the guests, and I headed off along the path to the beach. I met the cook and several of the others on their way back. My roommate was among them. She said, ‘I wouldn’t bother, Niamh. Everyone’s packing it in for the night. Too cold.’

‘Is Ruairidh still down there?’ I was anxious to see him. We had so little time left together before heading off again on our very separate ways, and I was desperate to try to put things right between us.

She seemed evasive. ‘I’m not sure.’ Then, ‘Listen, we’ve got some beer and vodka. We’re planning a wee ceilidh in the boys’ hut.’

But I wasn’t interested. ‘Thanks. I’ll catch you later.’ I was so intent on finding Ruairidh that I missed her warning.

I hurried on down to the beach, and as I rounded the dunes I saw them sitting side by side in the light of the dying fire. Ruairidh and Seonag, huddled together as if for warmth. The wind was sending smoke and sparks off into the night, and fanning the embers to cast their light on the pair. There was no one else there. They didn’t see me coming as I walked with heavy legs through the sand towards them, stopping then in my tracks as Seonag turned her head towards him and they kissed.

My gasp was involuntary. Forced from me, as with a fist in the gut, and they broke apart, startled. I saw regret in Ruairidh’s eyes immediately. Something verging on panic. Seonag just looked at me with her penetrating green eyes, glazed slightly from too much alcohol, but shining with something that looked very much like triumph.

There were no words to express my sense of betrayal. I turned and ran back up the path, the way I had come. And almost immediately felt, more than heard, the pounding of Ruairidh’s footsteps in my wake. He caught up with me shortly before the lodge. His hand on my arm pulling me to a halt, half-turning me towards him.

‘Don’t!’ I shouted at him. ‘Don’t dare tell me it’s not what it seemed.’

‘It’s not.’

I turned my head away in disgust.

‘I missed you.’

My head snapped back around, eyes blazing with anger and hurt. ‘Is that right? Well, you’ve got a really interesting way of showing it.’

‘I was drunk. Depressed, and...’

‘And Seonag was just there.’

I could see the shame in his eyes. He shrugged. ‘Yes.’ And even he realized how lame that sounded. ‘It was stupid, I know. I don’t even care about Seonag. I never have.’

‘And you clearly don’t give a damn about me. You’ve been avoiding me for weeks. And now this.’ I paused, uncertain if I had ever felt this much pain before. Then remembered. Only once. ‘We’re through, Ruairidh Macfarlane. Finished. It’s over.’

And I turned and fled in tears back to the lodge. In my room I lay on my bed and wept until my tears ran dry, leaving me with nothing but a sore throat and red and swollen eyes. Eventually, I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and burying my face in my hands. My summer idyll had turned into a nightmare, and all I wanted was to get away.

The door opened and light from the hallway fell in a slab across the floor. Seonag stepped into the light, a silhouette in the doorway. I couldn’t see her face as she said, ‘Don’t go reading too much into what you saw down there, Niamh.’

I found my voice with difficulty. ‘And what should I read into it?’

‘I don’t care about Ruairidh.’

‘Funny, he said the same thing about you.’ Which seemed to take the wind out of her sails. But not for long.

‘Just goes to show, then, doesn’t it? You can’t trust him.’

During the few days that remained I avoided contact with them both. The whole atmosphere in the lodge had changed. I’m sure even the guests must have sensed the difference. It felt as if every one of us had overstayed our welcome. The summer was finished and all we wanted now was to get back to our real lives. And when I returned to the mainland to start the autumn term of my second year at Galashiels, I was hugely depressed and determined to put Ruairidh and Seonag as far behind me as possible.