Thin Air

Chapter Four

Outside there was the sound of a car moving slowly down the track. Ian’s 4x4. Polly turned off the laptop. She didn’t care what the policeman thought; she couldn’t bear the idea that Ian would walk in and find them all staring at a message from his wife. A message that could be read as a suicide note. She still couldn’t quite believe in the email; thought if she opened her in-box again it would have vanished, a figment of their collective imaginations.

Ian was a techie, a geek, not given to emotion of any kind; and even now, as he stood in the doorway frowning, it was hard to tell what he made of the situation. Polly had always thought that he and Eleanor made an unlikely couple. How could Eleanor, who needed so much love, who wanted to be touched and hugged and kissed, fall for a man so stony and unresponsive? It had occurred to Polly that her own reaction was selfish: perhaps she just hated the idea of losing her close friends of university days, of being separated from them. But Caroline had married Lowrie, who was sympathetic and uncomplicated, and Polly was entirely happy for her.

In contrast, Eleanor’s engagement to Ian had made Polly anxious from the start. The night before Eleanor’s wedding the three of them had got drunk together in Polly’s flat. The bride and the bridesmaids and too much fizzy wine. An essential ritual.

‘You do realize that it’s not too late?’ Polly had said, after Caroline had fallen asleep in a chair in the corner, her mouth open, snoring. ‘You don’t have to go through with it. Pull out now and I’ll sort out the practical stuff for you.’

‘Of course I don’t want to pull out.’ Eleanor had been horrified, had looked at Polly as if she hardly knew her. ‘Ian’s what I want and what I need. I can’t imagine not spending the rest of my life with him. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you be happy for me? Are you jealous that I’ve found someone special at last?’

That had been three years ago and it still seemed to Polly that their friendship was strained. Caroline hadn’t noticed, but Polly had been aware of the tension, of having to choose her words carefully. She couldn’t spill out her feelings to Eleanor as she had in the old days, when they’d both been single. She’d hoped this trip to Unst might make everything between them right again.

Of course Eleanor’s wedding to Ian had taken place and Polly had been there as the witness, smiling for the camera outside the registry office on a breezy March day. Eleanor had changed her name to her husband’s, although few of their friends did that any more. In the afternoon they’d gone up in the London Eye and had drunk a toast in champagne to Mr and Mrs Longstaff. Then Eleanor had sent the guests away to party without them. ‘My husband and I want to be alone.’ A radiant smile.

Caroline’s marriage had brought back all the memories of that time, and Polly remembered Eleanor’s wedding again as Ian stood, solid and angular, in the doorway of the house. She had a brief and ridiculous idea. Two weddings and a funeral. She realized that the start of a grin was appearing on her face and knew it was caused by stress, but was horrified all the same.

The police officer with the Spanish name spoke first. He stood up and introduced himself to the newcomer. ‘You didn’t see anything of your wife on the island?’

Ian shook his head. He was always a man of few words. Now he seemed frozen. ‘I went up to Lowrie’s house, but there was nobody there. I tried phoning, but it went straight to voicemail.’

‘Our volunteer coastguards are out looking,’ Perez said.

Ian nodded, but didn’t move from his place by the door.

‘Let’s walk,’ Perez said. ‘I always find it easier to think when I’m walking.’

Polly thought that he was a sensitive man. He wouldn’t want to tell Ian about the email from Eleanor in front of an audience.

Ian turned and the two men left the house. Polly and Marcus stayed in the living room with Perez’s younger colleague. Marcus got up to make more coffee. He collected the tray from outside and walked with it to the kitchen. Polly wanted to apologize to him. I should never have brought you here. I thought it would be fun and a good way to get to know my friends. Now it’s turned into the worst sort of nightmare. But Wilson, the young sergeant, was watching and listening, and in these circumstances anything she said might be misinterpreted.

She still felt insecure when strangers were in the room, socially awkward, despite her two degrees and her brilliant job at the Sentiman Library. It was to do with her voice and her modest suburban background, a fear of the educated classes learned from her parents. Sometimes she was convinced that Ian suffered in the same way; they were both from the north and they both lacked the confidence that Marcus and Eleanor had inherited along with their clear voices and their savings accounts. Perhaps they’d have been better suited together, leaving Eleanor and Marcus to make a stylish celebrity couple.

‘It’ll have been a fine wedding,’ the police officer said. It was the first time she’d heard him speak and though he spoke slowly she struggled to understand. Lowrie had been in England since university. They laughed at his accent sometimes, but it wasn’t as dense as this. ‘Unst folk always throw a good hamefarin’.’ Polly thought he sounded wistful, as if he wished he’d been invited.

‘I don’t think Eleanor came inside again last night,’ she said. ‘The door was still unlocked. If you’re from London you always lock the door. It’s a habit.’ She’d been thinking about that.

‘These midsummer nights some folk find it hard to sleep,’ Wilson said. ‘And the weather’s so fine your friend might have gone for a walk. You see the stars here in a way you can’t in the city. Lowrie and his family will be back tidying up in the hall at Meoness now. Perhaps she’s there.’

‘But the email?’ Polly cried. ‘Why would she send that?’

‘A kind of sick joke? Or maybe someone else hacked into her account?’

Polly shook her head. Eleanor loved mischief and practical jokes, but she wouldn’t put her friends through this kind of anxiety. If she’d sent the email she’d have been watching through the window and would come bursting in with a Ta-da, that had you fooled grin on her face before they had time to be worried. The email disturbed Polly almost more than anything else. She supposed it was possible that Eleanor’s account had been hacked.

‘Is it OK if I go and check in the hall?’ she said. ‘We never thought that Lowrie and Caroline might be there.’

Sandy Wilson looked confused. She could tell that he didn’t know what to do – he wasn’t a man used to making decisions and he wanted to ask his boss. So she took the responsibility from him by grabbing her jacket and leaving. ‘Thanks. Tell Marcus where I’ve gone.’ And she walked out of the house.

Outside it was clear and the sea was sparkling with reflected sunlight. Polly saw that Ian and Perez were still strolling along the beach, deep in conversation, but she turned in the opposite direction, away from the shore, and neither man noticed her. The road was narrow, with a fence on one side and occasional passing places on the other. A sheep wandered into her path. She could smell the grease on its fleece before it scrambled away, and the scent of crushed grass. A great skua, sitting on the hill, hook-beaked and scary, seemed to be staring at her. Meoness was a sprawling community of croft houses with land attached and an occasional new-build. Between Sletts and the other houses there were skeletons of old buildings, walls and boundary dykes half-hidden by cotton grass and wild iris. Where the track joined a slightly wider road, there stood an old red telephone kiosk and the community hall. A couple of cars were parked outside and there was the noise of a Hoover coming through the open windows. She pushed on the door and went inside. Lowrie stood on a stepladder in the main hall and was taking down the bunting. In London he worked as an accountant for a big retail chain, and was always very respectable in jacket and tie. Now he was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and a round Fair Isle hat shaped like a pork pie. He grinned and waved. The sound of the vacuum cleaner came from a smaller room, where they’d eaten supper the night before. It stopped and Caroline came through.

‘So you’ve come to help at last!’ she said. ‘About time too. We’ve nearly finished.’ She was big-boned and blonde. ‘We were just about to have a drink to celebrate clearing up. Apparently that’s traditional too.’

‘Is Eleanor here?’

‘No! Isn’t she sleeping off her hangover?’ Caroline took the string of bunting from her husband and started to wind it into a ball.

‘She didn’t sleep at Sletts last night,’ Polly said. ‘We don’t know where she is. Ian was so worried that he called the police. A couple of officers came from Lerwick and the inspector’s talking to him now. The coastguards are doing a search of the cliffs.’

Lowrie climbed down the ladder. ‘She’ll surely not have gone far.’ He sounded so matter-of-fact that Polly could tell he thought they were overreacting. City people, so sensitized to crime that they saw it everywhere. Perhaps he was embarrassed that they’d caused this fuss, dragging police officers across two islands and two ferries because a woman had wanted to experience the strange Shetland night alone. But now it was lunchtime and there was still no sign of Eleanor. And she’d sent that weird email.

‘She sent me this message,’ Polly tried to keep her voice calm, ‘saying not to bother looking for her. Saying that we’d never see her alive again.’ And at that point she began to cry.

They took her into Lowrie’s parents’ house and sat her in a tall wooden chair in the kitchen and made her tea. After the sunshine it seemed very dark in the house, all shadow and dust. There was a rack over a Rayburn where dozens of tea towels were folded and hanging to dry. Presumably they’d been used the night before and already washed. The room seemed to Polly to be impossibly cluttered. How could they find anything in the chaos of fading magazines, knitting wool and vegetables? There was a faint smell of sheep and mould. She hated disorder and found it physically repellent. Weren’t they embarrassed to bring guests to a house that was so untidy?

There was no sign of Lowrie’s parents.

‘I know’, she said, ‘that it’s ridiculous, and I’m sure there’s a rational explanation. But Eleanor’s been so fragile lately. Losing the baby and all that talk of haunting and ghosts. When the policeman said you’d all be in the hall, I thought, Of course, she’ll be there. I couldn’t stand being in that house any longer. And then, when you hadn’t seen her, I knew something dreadful must have happened.’

The room was very warm and she felt that she might fall asleep in the hard chair, and when she woke up all this would be a dream.

‘I’ll walk back with you,’ Caroline said. ‘There might be some news.’

Her voice sounded hard, detached, as if she didn’t care about Eleanor at all. Why wasn’t she more upset? Polly had the idea that Caroline just wanted her out of the house before her in-laws returned. Perhaps a hysterical friend would reflect badly on her. Caroline was an academic, always measured and precise. It also occurred to Polly that Caroline might not believe her story and that she wanted to check out the facts of Eleanor’s disappearance for herself.

They took a different route back to the holiday cottage. Caroline led the way through the garden where hens scratched behind wire mesh, over a stile and onto short cropped grass. She seemed very at home here.

‘Would you ever live in Shetland?’ Polly asked suddenly. ‘Would Lowrie want that?’

‘Maybe. If I could think of something to do all day. We’ve talked about it. I wouldn’t want to bring up kids in the city.’ Caroline gave a sudden grin. ‘He has this idea about setting up a business here. Soft fruit grown in polytunnels. High-end jams and preserves.’

‘And you wouldn’t mind that? Leaving behind your friends. And everything that goes with being in town. Theatre on your doorstep. Shops and bars and restaurants. Even Lerwick’s miles away.’ Polly found herself distracted from her anxiety by this new Caroline, who wore wellingtons, could negotiate a barbed-wire fence with ease and could contemplate making a home in this barren landscape where the seasons were so extreme.

‘Ah, we might have to compromise on the exact location. Unst might be a step too far for me. And I love Grusche and George to pieces, but I wouldn’t want to be next door to the in-laws.’ She paused for a moment and looked back over the croft. ‘Sometimes Grusche treats Lowrie as if he is nine years old and can’t clean his teeth without being reminded.’

They came to the brow of a low hill and Polly got her bearings. She could see the track to their house and the beach ahead of them. Ian and Perez were still on the sand, but they were heading back to Sletts. There was a view south of cliffs and headlands.

‘If Eleanor fell over a cliff,’ she said suddenly, ‘she could lie on the rocks below for days without being found.’

Ahead of them was a drystone circle with a gap in the side. A skua, which seemed to Polly as big as an eagle, suddenly dived at them straight from the sun. Polly shrieked. She could feel the air of its wing-beat on her face. Caroline gave a little laugh. ‘It’s only protecting its nest. If you put your hand in the air, it’ll aim for that and miss your face.’ She pointed at the stone circle. ‘That’s a planticrub. People used to grow cabbages in there as food for the sheep. I suppose the wall sheltered the plants from the salt wind.’

She was about to walk on and Polly could see that her friend had made the decision that this would be her home. She was buying into the history and the culture already. But Caroline’s subject was human geography, and Polly thought she’d always be an outsider here, an observer. She’d regard her neighbours with the same amused objectivity as when she was studying migrant workers for her PhD.

Polly couldn’t imagine life in the city without her friends. Because they’d always been there, she’d never felt the need to build a wider social circle and somehow, at this moment, Marcus didn’t matter. The shock of the diving bird had provoked a panic that was unlike anything she’d experienced in everyday life. At work she was a competent professional, choosing stock for the private subscription library where she worked, advising the historians and students who used it. But here the faintness of the day before had returned. She bent, rested her hands on her knees and felt the blood come back to her head.

‘Do you want to rest for a bit?’ Caroline was solicitous, but smug too. She was fit and she could have continued walking for miles. Polly thought again with surprise that the woman had no real concern for Eleanor’s safety. Her head was full of her new husband and her plans for the future.

They sat with their backs to the wall. The sun had heated the stones and they were out of the wind.

Polly felt herself falling asleep again and wondered how she could do that when Eleanor still hadn’t been found. She stood up, shaking her limbs to feel more awake, and for the first time looked into the planticrub. No sign that anything had been grown there for years. Cropped grass and a scattering of sheep droppings. And an iPhone with a distinctive pink case, which Polly recognized as Eleanor’s.