Otters' Moon

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Egmont Books

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

Text copyright © 2020 Susanna Bailey

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN 978 1 4052 9496 6

Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9495 9

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

www.egmontbooks.co.uk

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For my own amazing ‘islanders’: my children, Ali, Joe, Josh, Emma-Marie and Oli.

With an ocean of love.

1  ONE

2  TWO

3  THREE

4  FOUR

5  FIVE

6  SIX

7  SEVEN

8  EIGHT

9  NINE

10  TEN

11  ELEVEN

12  TWELVE

13  THIRTEEN

14  FOURTEEN

15  FIFTEEN

16  SIXTEEN

17  SEVENTEEN

18  EIGHTEEN

19  NINETEEN

20  TWENTY

21  TWENTY-ONE

22  TWENTY-TWO

23  TWENTY-THREE

24  TWENTY-FOUR

25  TWENTY-FIVE

26  TWENTY-SIX

27  TWENTY-SEVEN

28  TWENTY-EIGHT

29  TWENTY-NINE

30  THIRTY

31  THIRTY-ONE

32  THIRTY-TWO

33  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When we came to the island it was summer, but summer stayed behind on the mainland.

There’s a chill in the air here. The sort of chill that runs through you when something is about to happen. Something bad. We have had blue skies – the kind of blue skies a little kid would paint, only without the yellow sun in the corner. If we see the sun at all, it’s pale and half-hearted. Like it doesn’t want to be here either.

I was kind of looking forward to all the ‘fresh air and outdoor stuff ’ Mum kept on about when she sold me this Scottish island holiday. When she said the house was a stone’s throw from the beach. I saw rolling waves; warm, golden sand. Kids that would be made up to have a boy from London come and liven up their boring island life. Well, true, the house is near the beach. It’s all by itself on the clifftop, overlooking the bay. But the sand here is malevolent, full of tiny sharp edges to cut your feet. And it’s more grey than golden. The sea stings your eyes and it’s too still. Like it’s holding its breath. Waiting.

As for the local kids, they’re not interested in making friends. They just nudge one another and look away when they see me coming. Or whisper behind their hands. Not the kind of whispering the girls back at school go in for – this is different. It’s like they know something.

Something I need to know, too.

But yesterday I did meet a girl with something to say.

She’s sitting on the patchy grass outside our fence, staring out to sea and flicking pebbles over the edge of the cliff.

I risk a ‘hello.’ She carries on throwing and staring. I stand there, scuffing at the grass with the toe of my trainer, wondering whether she heard me over the whine of the wind. Whether to try again.

Wondering why she’s here and whether she’s in need of company, too.

My throat feels dry. She’s probably just another unsociable islander. I could look pretty stupid here. I pick up a white pebble, weigh it in my palm; decide to give her the benefit of the doubt: I’ve had enough of one-way conversations with seabirds.

I sit down next to her and join in. Must be ten minutes and twenty pebbles before she speaks.

‘You’re him, then? At Cliff House?’ She screws up her eyes like there is bright sun only she can see.

I nod. Ten days on this island and I’m as tongue-tied as everyone else round here.

Another five pebbles worth of silence.

‘I’m Meghan. Meg.’ Her pale hair lifts in the breeze. She pulls a strand of it into her mouth, tilts her head to look at me from under her fringe; points to the left side of the beach below us. ‘That’s my house – down there.’

‘Where?’ I peer over her shoulder.

‘The boathouse.’

‘You live there? But it’s all boarded up . . .’

She looks at me again, a pebble poised in her hand.

‘Grandad said a boy was poking around yesterday.’

I think of the old man I saw down on the shore, bent and thin as driftwood; his hair bleached and dry like the grass among the dunes. I had noticed his eyes as I passed: still as the sea, and blue. Bright, vivid blue.

‘I wasn’t “poking around”,’ I say. ‘I was looking around. Looking for something interesting to do. Not that I found anything.’

Meg stands up. ‘I have to go,’ she says. She brushes sand and dead grass from her jeans. ‘Don’t come by our house again, OK?’

‘What exactly is your problem? You and everyone else in this place. Against the local religion to be friendly, is it?’

‘Just don’t come by,’ she says, and grabs my arm. ‘I’ll come for you, OK? I’ll come for you.’

‘What makes you think I want you to?’ I mutter, as she walks away.

‘You do!’ she calls without looking back.

I flick my last pebble over the cliff and watch it fall.

Today, I am ‘out of the house getting sea air in my lungs’. Apparently, this is just what I need. At nine in the morning. Apparently, it’s not what Mum needs. She hasn’t left the house in two weeks now, except to ‘nip to the shop’. The shop. The only shop. But she doesn’t even want to do that today. Still, at least that’s an hour of my day sorted, getting eggs and beans. Another ten to go before it’s dark enough to go to sleep. It gets dark early here. Even in summer.

The shop is some sort of converted chapel, with arched windows. One of them has a crack from top to bottom; its yellowing glass is criss-crossed with tape. The other is jammed full of stuff. What you might call a no-effort window display. Tins of fruit that look like they’ve been there since the war, a stack of ‘Tom Piper’ tinned steak (tinned steak?), bottles of cod liver oil. There’s someone suspiciously like Captain Birdseye on the label – he has a pipe in his mouth, and he’s puffing a massive cloud of smoke, while looking smug about the ‘health-sustaining properties’ of cod liver oil.

There’s a pyramid stack of boxed ‘Humane Mousetraps’ in one corner. The whole thing’s covered in cobwebs. Either there are no mice here, or the islanders don’t go in for the ‘humane’ approach.

Inside the shop, ropes hang like coiled snakes from the walls and there are huge baskets of logs, buckets of coal, jet-black and glistening, sacks of green apples, and potatoes. (Most of them are green too.)

I find beans, a brand I recognise, thank God. I choose six speckled brown eggs from a blue bowl on the counter. A curled feather is stuck to one of them. I pull it off; blow it into the air; watch it drift from side to side, then disappear, lost among the apples. I wonder for the first time whether hens get upset when their eggs are taken away.

‘You buying those things, young man?’ A sharp voice from nowhere.

I almost drop the eggs, look round; see no one.

‘Yes. Sorry. Just these, please.’ I put my purchases on the counter, quickly followed by money.

The shopkeeper is younger than his voice, and, weirdly, dressed in a suit and tie. His hair is black, and too shiny, like it’s painted on. He holds out what my mum would call artistic hands – long fingers, shiny nails.

‘Thank you,’ he says. He disappears under the counter, reappears with a battered tin box; produces my change. No till, then. My mum’s brought me to some kind of Lost World.

‘Don’t suppose you know where I can get a decent phone signal?’ I ask from the doorway.

The shopkeeper looks up, pen in hand, looks down; continues writing.

‘That’ll be a no, then,’ I mutter.

Mum’s up and dressed when I get back. Which is great. She eats breakfast with me. Which is even better. She ‘hasn’t been hungry’ until dinner time since we arrived here. And even then, she pushes her food around her plate like it’s something suspicious; slides most of it into the bin if she can.

‘Leave the dishes for now,’ she says, ‘I’m going down to the beach. Thought I might try out my new camera. Come with me?’

‘OK,’ I say, wondering what I’ll find to do down there. ‘Great.’

The wind’s dropped when we get to the beach.

That stillness again. Like walking on to a film set.

‘Those old boats – see? Over there?’ Mum points to the edge of the dunes. Close to Meg’s boathouse. ‘I noticed them when we got here. Covered in barnacles. Great colours. Think I’ll start with those.’

I nod. Smile. ‘Brilliant,’ I say. ‘Take as long as you like, Mum.’

Maybe she was right. Maybe this break will be good for her; help get over Dad. Help with whatever made her sad when he was still around. Maybe.

A seagull lifts from one of the upturned hulls, gives a loud squawk of protest at our intrusion. For a moment it looks like he’s flying straight at us, but he swoops away, circles to the left and disappears.

I sit with Mum for a while, listen to the whir of her lenses, the click of the shutter: sounds I haven’t heard for months. There’s a leap of something light in my stomach.

I think of her bent over her laptop, engrossed in her images, hair glinting in the firelight, while Dad and I stick pieces of model aircraft to our fingers. Somehow, Dad always made the aircraft turn out OK. Even though there was always one piece missing. And he always got round Mum about the glue on the carpet. Always made her laugh.

That’s another sound I haven’t heard in a while.

We walk back to the cottage when we’re hungry, have sandwiches and hot chocolate for lunch. Mum asks if I mind another trip to the beach when we’re done, and I don’t, even though it’s boring down there. It’s no more boring than everywhere else on this island. And when Mum gets up to clear the table, she moves just a bit more like herself. I’ll take being bored, just to see that.

I help, put our leftovers in a bag for the birds. Not that I’ve seen any birds other than the seagulls, and I’m not sure about encouraging them.

On the walk back to the beach I ask when Dad’s coming to see me. Mum doesn’t know. He’s busy, she tells me. But he’ll come soon. He misses me.

‘Right,’ I say, wondering about the evidence for that. I push the wondering away. ‘There’s no phone signal on this stupid island,’ I shout. ‘Dad can’t even ring me.’ I kick at the rough grass under our feet. ‘Is that why you brought me here, to get back at him?’

I didn’t know I was going to say that.

‘Luke, we talked about this . . .’

‘You talked about it,’ I say.

Mum stops; looks right at me. Her cheeks are pale again.

‘Sorry,’ I say. I look away.

‘Me too,’ Mum says. She shakes her head slowly, sighs. Like she’s sorry about a whole lot of things.

It takes ages to get back to the boats. My feet keep sinking in the sand.

The seagull is there again, perched on one of the upturned hulls. It keeps its round black eyes on fixed on me; follows my every move.

Mum wanders up and down the sand for an hour, lifts and drops her camera. Gazes out to sea. She doesn’t take any more pictures in the end. She blames the light. Not enough of it now. Too many shadows.

We go back to the cottage and this evening she’s too tired to eat dinner.

When she goes to bed, I pick up her camera, look for the shots she took that morning. There’s nothing. She’s wiped them all.

My fault.

I punctured the day.

Next morning, Mum’s still in bed at eleven a.m. I take her tea, then coffee and toast, but she’s not hungry.

Back to square one. Good job, Luke.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says. ‘Go off and enjoy yourself.’

Tricky. On both counts.

‘I’ll give it a go,’ I say. I offer her the best fake smile I can find; hope she’ll notice it doesn’t reach my eyes and ask me why.

She doesn’t. She just smiles back, nods; shifts further down into her bed. I hover, wait for her to ask where I’m going, what time I’ll be home; whether I’ve got water and sunscreen and snacks. She doesn’t do that either.

‘I’ll see you later, then,’ I say. My voice sounds weird, sort of hollow.

‘Bye, love,’ she mutters.

‘Sure you don’t want me to stay?’

No reply.

I close the door. My insides are hollow too.

I head for the beach. The boats Mum was so excited about yesterday are partially obliterated by a layer of sand, scattered with strips of ugly black seaweed. I think about all the bits of Mum that got buried when Dad left: the bright, funny, loving bits. The bits that made her Mum. The Mum that would have given me the third degree before letting me leave today. My stomach twists. Does she even care about me any more?

I hate her; hate Dad more.

I miss them both.

I kick a shower of sand into the air. Another. I blink away hot tears; turn away from the spoiled boats and run in the other direction, towards the dunes. I fling myself down at the foot of the first one, lie on my back and stare into the stupid pretend summer sky. Wide grey stretches of nothing; vague splashes of watery blue, two thin clouds. A sky that doesn’t know how to feel either.

I sit up, search for something to distract me. A pink crab hurries past my foot, its silly sideways scuttle surprisingly speedy. A childhood memory surfaces. I reach out, scoop him up and go in search of more.

I’m at a key moment in a race to the sea – six rockpool crabs ready on the pebbled start line – when the girl, Meg, appears out of nowhere.

‘You seen my grandad?’

Her voice takes me by surprise. I make a stupid little noise that I hope she doesn’t hear.

‘Nope. Just me, a few crabs and one ugly seagull. The fun just keeps on coming on this island.’

‘I used to do that,’ Meg says, nodding towards my line of crabs, ‘when I was little.’

I get up. ‘Nothing better to do,’ I say. ‘How do you stand it here? I don’t get why anyone would want to live in this godforsaken dump.’

She looks hurt, just for a moment. I feel a flicker of guilt. I didn’t mean to be rude. On the other hand, I didn’t ask her to interrupt my game.

‘How long are you staying, then?’

I shrug. ‘School’s back in six weeks, but who knows? No one tells me anything.’

I grab my sweatshirt, shake the sand out. A crab falls from it, lands upside down, tiny legs and pincers flailing.

Meg bends down, picks it up and puts it on the back of her hand. It freezes.

‘Shore crab,’ she says.

‘No kidding.’

I’m not in the mood for nature lessons. I should be slicing up the pitch in the park with Sam, Luca and the rest of the footie gang. Or huddled in my room, jamming guitar with Jez, not a whiff of nature or fresh air anywhere near us.

She flicks hair from her eyes. Today, they’re green, not blue.

‘These mottled ones are the most common. They’re camouflaged, so they can hide from predators,’ she says. Her tone makes it clear that I’m one of those. ‘But one in twenty are bright green, and some of the really small ones are yellow.’

‘Wikipedia is a wonderful thing,’ I say.

That squint from under her fringe again.

‘My parents were marine biologists,’ she says. ‘That’s why they came to live in this “godforsaken dump”.’

‘Thought you lived with your grandad.’

‘I do. My parents – they – aren’t around any more.’

‘So, what? They just went off and left you here?’ I laugh and immediately regret it.

Meg doesn’t seem to have heard. She lifts her hand level with her eyes, peers at the small crab, still curled there.

‘These guys can shed their legs to escape an attacker,’ she says, ‘and still survive.’ She lowers the crab gently on to the sand, where it begins digging and quickly disappears.

‘Handy,’ I say. I pull my sweatshirt over my head.

‘The long-legged spider crabs,’ she says, ‘they’re the ones you want to watch out for. When the tide’s just out, there’s loads of them. They look like twiggy bits of seaweed. That’s how people miss them. Especially in the mist . . .’

‘Spider crabs. Yeah, right. I’m terrified.’

‘Google them, then. When you get home. A bit like a big black daddy-long-legs, they are. They bind themselves with seaweed, create a disguise. Sneaky little devils . . .’

‘Thanks, David Attenborough.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Meg says. She turns her head, as if something has startled her. Then she just runs off; disappears among the dunes.

‘The name’s Luke,’ I say into the air – suddenly sorry to see her go. ‘In case you’re interested.’

A gust of wind whips away my words. I spit sand from my tongue, pick up a large pebble and throw it, hard, into the sea.

I walk back along the beach, fitting my feet into the footsteps I left on my way out. That weird stillness is back again. The air is wet against my skin. And when I start to climb the rough cliff-side stairway to our cottage, the stone steps are slimy; slippery. Treacherous.

I look towards the sea. It has disappeared, erased by grey mist. But I can make out two figures on the sand below, one reed-thin: Meg and her grandfather. Meg is pulling at his arm. He shakes her off, stumbles a couple of steps towards the sea. She grabs him again; hugs him close.

The sound he makes silences the seagulls circling above.

Later, when I try to sleep, his piercing cry mixes with my dreams. I wake in a sweat; lie there till morning, listening to the moan of the wind around the cottage walls and wondering what made the old man feel so afraid.

I give up trying to sleep at six a.m., decide to try emailing Dad. There is actually a connection this time.

I type quickly, in case Mum comes in. Not likely, on the evidence of the last few days. But you never know.

Hi Dad,

How are things?

I wanted to ring you but no signal EVER on this island. Mum says you know where we are but how does she expect you to get in touch? It’s like the dark ages here.

Mum’s not taking masses of photos like she said she would. Most days, she isn’t even getting up. I don’t see why we have to stay.

I know you’re busy but can you come and get us? Me? Maybe I could stay with you for a bit?

Or even Gran’s would be better than this.

Honestly, I’m going stir-crazy, Dad. And school starts soon, anyway.

Be seeing you.

Love,

Luke

PS: What’s happening with Boro? Any new players?

I read it through, take out the bit about Mum not getting up again in case that makes him not want to come. I press send. Nothing happens.

Typical.

I kick my shoes across the floor. They clatter against the bedroom door.

Brilliant.

I sigh. Thump the send button. This time, it works. Miracle.

Mum appears a minute later, squinting like she’s emerged from hibernation.

‘It’s ten past six, Luke. You OK?’

‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘Never better.’

She sits down on my bed. There are pink pillow-marks across her cheek. Her dressing gown is on inside out. I want to be angry with her; about Dad, about this island, about everything. But she looks like a little girl woken from a nightmare, her eyes all round and worried.

‘I was just going for a wee,’ I say. ‘I tripped over my shoes. Sorry. Go back to bed, Mum.’

‘Luke,’ she says. ‘Sweetheart.’ She brushes my hair from my forehead like she used to when I was little. This time, I don’t move away. ‘I know it’s not great for you here, not where you want to be. But I think it will help me. I really do. And when we go back . . .’

‘When?’ I say. ‘When’s that?’

‘Well, you’re back in school the second week in September, so . . .’

‘We’re not staying until then! No way. Mum, this place is doing my head in. I can stay with Dad. I messaged him.’

‘You’ve heard from him?’

‘No, but it’ll be OK.’

Mum pulls at a thread on her dressing gown, twists it around her fingers; lets it unravel again. Her fingernails look like mine now: pale and bitten, ragged at the edges. Back home, her nails were always long, and painted an embarrassing bright red.

I wish she’d paint them again.

‘Luke, sweetheart, everything’s a bit – up in the air just now, you know. We’re still not sure what’s best . . .’

‘Best for who?’ I shout, standing now. ‘Is anyone actually going to ask me about any of this? I’m not some stupid little kid you can just cart around wherever you want.’

Mum is standing now too. I see that I’m as tall as she is. When did that happen? My fists are clenched tight. I sit down again.