Page 107 of Take Me Away

Now I’m back at Salt Cottage, checking the time and wondering if Kit is back at the harbour yet and how long it might be until he’s finished being Kit the Fisherman and when he might get to kiss me again. A wild wind has picked up, snapping the wisteria that crawls over the front of the cottage against the windowpanes. The sky is dark and pregnant with a heavy expectation. Welcome to Cornwall, where the weather changes its mind every three minutes.

Maggie’s wardrobe stands open like a reproach. I’ve been putting this off – the sorting, the packing, the final letting go. But Kit’s words from this morning won’t leave me alone.

You don’t have to keep one foot out the door.

So I start pulling things out. Cardigans in soft wool, hand-knitted and loved into shape. Floral dresses that smell faintly of lavender and the sea. A waxed jacket with ‘Sand Bay Lighthouse Committee’ stitched on the breast pocket.

Each piece is a memory.

I hold up a blue cardigan, the one she wore constantly that last summer before I left. Ten years ago, sitting in this very cottage, Maggie had wrapped it around my shoulders when I’d confessed about the opportunity in LA.

‘Go,’ she’d said simply. ‘Chase it. See what you’re made of.’

‘But what if I fail?’

‘Then you come home and try something else. That’s what home is for, my love. A place to leave from. A place to return to.’

Not like my mother. Never like my mother.

I sink onto the bed, cardigan clutched to my chest, and the memories I’ve been holding back come flooding through.

My mother’s voice, sharp and cold: ‘Hollywood? Don’t be ridiculous, Isla. You’re not special enough for that.’

Ten years old, showing her a school play programme where I’d been cast as the lead: ‘It’s a school play, not the West End. Don’t get ideas above your station.’

Fifteen, and crying after returning from Sea Salt Bay and leaving Kit behind with all these unexplored feelings still churning through me like high tide over sand: ‘Stop being so dramatic. This is why no one likes you.’

Seventeen, acceptance letter to drama school: ‘I’m not paying for you to prance around pretending to be someone you’re not.’

Every dream dismissed. Every hope diminished. Every time I’d dared to want something, she’d made sure I knew I didn’t deserve it.

But Maggie – Maggie had been different.

‘Your mother’s afraid,’ she’d told me once, when I was sixteen and raw from another cutting remark. ‘Afraid you’ll succeed where she failed.’

‘I don’t understand why she hates me.’

‘She doesn’t hate you, love. She hates herself. And she’s determined to make sure you hate yourself too, so you’ll stay small. Stay manageable. Stay hers.’

‘You must hate the fact she married your son.’ I’d swiped at my face, trying to pull myself together.

Maggie had stared out of the window of the cottage she’d lived in since her own marriage. Grandpa died when I was only a baby; he was a fisherman, but it was a heart attack, not the sea, that had claimed him. Then she’d turned to me, eyes bright, sharp. ‘I’d say they make a very happy couple. Come on, love, let’s go and put the kettle on. I’ll see if I’ve got some of those cheese scones I can refresh.’

Margaret Maggie Quinn. Keep Calm and Carry the Fuck Along.

I miss her so much. It hits me, this gaping wound of regret and longing. I bend over, pressing the cardigan to my face, breathing in the faded scent of Maggie’s perfume.

Kit was right. I’ve been running from good things my whole life. From the possibility of what Kit and I could have been ten years ago. From this cottage, this village, this belonging. Running because my mother taught me that wanting things – wanting to be loved, to be seen, to matter – was dangerous. A current that could sweep you away.

And then Marcus had confirmed every terrible lesson she’d instilled.

You’re only valuable if you’re useful. You’re only worth loving if you’re grateful. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t think you deserve better.

But Maggie had shown me something different. And Kit – God, Kit, I think, would keep showing me every day if I was brave enough to let him.

You’re allowed to be here. In my bed, in my house, in my life.

How can I, though, when he doesn’t know the dark things I’ve got locked inside? That beneath the gloss, the shine, there’s this broken little doll abandoned in a sandpit that doesn’t know how to be whole again.