Kate’s, so we entered the station like a pair of crazy rucksack-toting sprinters and only just caught the train.
Ironically, I now have several hours to make my choice from the slim pickings here. The weather’s closed in since we arrived and the last two ferries were cancelled. Is this entire year going to be one long delay?
‘Are these supposed to make people stay away from Scotland?’ Niven reaches past me and picks one with a psychedelic tartan piper on it, who appears to be striding up the middle of a B-road in the Highlands. His hair is an unnatural shade of satsuma and his swinging kilt so scarlet it practically jumps off the card and slaps your face. ‘I wouldn’t want to meet that fella on a deserted road. Or receive this image in the post when I’ve a hangover.’
He has a point. In the end I opt for a too-green Highland landscape, its tartan border only slightly less offensive than the others on offer, and take it to the gravel-faced assistant behind the counter to pay.
‘Were you hoping for a crossing?’ he asks.
‘Yep.’
He makes a sucking sound with his teeth like the noise of water draining down an almost-blocked sink. ‘You’ll be lucky to get across this side of dark,’ he says. Ah, the cheery banter of the ferry port. I’d forgotten the joys. ‘You two lads on a jolly over there?’
‘Seeing family,’ I say, hiding my smile when he gawps at me. Clearly he’d pegged me as a tourist.
‘Ach, well. Not a good day for that either, I reckon.’
Like I said, cheery.
‘He thought you were English,’ Niven mocks as we head for the dubious-looking snack concession at the far edge of the car park, the only food provider brave (or daft) enough to be open in this weather. The food kiosk in the ferry terminal was already locked and shuttered when we arrived.
‘No he didn’t.’
‘Face it: you’ve been away too long, Mullins. Swallowed up by that great big London place. Your people have forgotten you.’
‘Shut up.’ I smile, but my stomach shifts.
I know Ailish will be glad to see me, but does anyone else from my early life remember me? My family didn’t exactly leave with a farewell parade. I still remember the shock of being woken before the sun, Ma stuffing just what she could carry into holdalls and bin bags, dragging Callum and me away from the only other home we’d known: Grandma’s house.
My maternal grandmother is long gone and I don’t miss her. She made Ma’s life hell after our pre-dawn escape from her home on Mull and I don’t think she ever forgave her, spitting out her bile and fury at us long distance in phone calls my mother felt obliged to endure. Grandma loved my father, you see. Thought he could do no wrong. Ma was a failure for not being enough of a woman to keep him.
I shouldn’t be glad someone is dead, but in her case I am. I’m pretty sure Grandma’s hateful attitude to Ma added to her self-loathing, hastening her own death from years of alcohol and hurt. It’s part of why us returning to Mull as a family was never an option. Ailish was here, of course, Niven too – although I don’t remember him much as a kid because we moved away so early. The coincidence of meeting him again over five hundred miles away at university in London felt like a gift of providence. Still does.
We brave a coffee and a bacon roll each and scurry back to the shelter of the ferry terminal.
‘Don’t take the lid off your coffee,’ Niven says when we’re squeezed onto bright-blue rigid plastic chairs in the departure lounge.
‘Why?’
‘It’s not pretty. I didn’t know coffee came in grey.’
‘It’s warm and it’s wet. That’s all I care about.’ I roll my eyes as Niven chokes on his sub-standard coffee. ‘You haven’t changed.’
‘Apart from being AWOL from the Island,’ he says, wiping coffee from his chin.
‘What’s going on there?’
My friend slumps in his unforgiving seat. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘How?’
‘Can’t really explain. My mates at home reckon it’s a premature midlife crisis. It’s just – nothing seems as fulfilling as it did before.’
‘Before Ruth?’ I’m careful not to look at him when I say it.
‘Not just that. Lots of things, really. Ruth was the start of it, I think.’
‘The teaching?’
I see his boots tapping together. A sure sign he feels uncomfortable. It isn’t that he can’t take confrontation, more that he’d rather work it out himself than by committee.
‘I love the kids. I’ll always love working with them. But since Ruth, everything’s come up for renewal. When we were together I was looking to a future where a safe job on the Island was necessary. But now… now I just don’t know.’
When I’ve pictured returning to Mull, Niven in his teaching job was as sure and immovable a feature as Duart Castle or the peak of Ben More. I hadn’t realised how much the break-up could shake him. But that’s the point – I haven’t noticed because I haven’t been involved in my friends’ lives for so long.
This year, I will be a better friend to them all.
Almost two hours later, our luck takes a turn for the better. Against all odds the leaden skies break and the wind drops. The sunshine that appears is the weakest, weediest excuse for sun, but we’re delighted to see it. Twenty minutes later, an announcement comes over the tannoy to inform the thirty or so of us noble pilgrims who’ve stuck out the wait that a ferry will be heading to the Island in an hour.
It’s almost 4 p.m. when we reach Craignure. I’ve missed several buses and the next one won’t run for another hour and a half. More waiting. I think of transport back in London, how I consider anything over a twenty-minute wait to be unreasonable. This year will teach me patience, if nothing else.
‘Hey, don’t go waiting for a ride to Fionnphort,’ Niven says when I start to head for the bus stop. ‘I’ll drive you over.’
‘I can’t ask you to do that. It’s miles out of your way.’
‘You haven’t asked. I’ve offered. I’ve a friend here who lets me park on his drive when I go to the mainland. I can’t stand the bus. I always meet some ancient local who knows my mum and has embarrassing stories about me they’ll happily share with every other passenger. Come on. Accept a lift from a dodgy local, eh? Start living dangerously.’
It isn’t an offer I’m likely to pass up. ‘Sure, why not? I’ll make sure Ailish pays you in cake.’
‘Deal. And you can buy the first round when we go drinking.’ He grins as we set off. ‘Because we will be drinking many times, Sam.’
Single-track roads are a feature of the Island and something I’d forgotten the thrill of navigating. I’m usually
