Take Me Home Read online

  To my mother, Ivana Fornera Sacerdoti, who, as a child, saw.

  To Claudio Corduas: the blood is strong, but friendship is stronger.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Emily's Song

  Prologue – Across the worlds

  1 – The night I fell

  2 – I loved her since forever

  3 – The last word before silence

  4 – The other half of me

  5 – The long goodbye

  6 – Girl in a white dress

  7 – A wall between us

  8 – Spirit be free

  9 – The end and the beginning

  10 – A party for the dead

  11 – Ice and chocolate

  12 – Looking for Emily

  13 – She came softly in

  14 – A thought from me to you

  15 – Voices from long ago

  16 – The days between winter and spring

  17 – Little fire

  18 – Scenes from a Scottish village

  19 – The chemistry of grief

  20 – Remedies

  21 – Take me home

  22 – Black waters

  23 – She isn’t you

  24 – In our blood

  25 – Tomorrow

  26 – You couldn’t have come at a better time

  27 – Love remains

  28 – A flying thought

  29 – Separation

  30 – Miracles

  31 – Rivers of time

  32 – In search of a heart

  33 – Colliding

  34 – Headland

  35 – It will be soon

  36 – 523 miles

  37 – Rapture

  38 – To see her face

  39 – Little girl lost

  40 – And still I found her

  41 – Broken promises

  42 – Truth

  43 – Drowning

  44 – Rose

  45 – You only love once

  46 – Sisters

  47 – Writing on the wall

  48 – My story to tell

  49 – Scotland

  50 – Spring inside me

  Epilogue – The dead have been seen alive

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Ross, who puts up with having a writer for a wife with remarkable good humour, and to my sons, Sorley and Luca, who are, simply, my whole life. Sorry for all the many times my body was there with you and my head was in Glen Avich.

  Thanks to both my families, the Sacerdoti and the Walkers, for always rooting for me – especially my mother-in-law, Beth. Thank you, Beth, for a million reasons, and you know them all!

  Thank you to Irene, my sister in everything but blood. Ti voglio bene, amica mia!

  My endless gratitude goes to Sorley McLean because his poems were the seeds of this book. Mary and Robert’s story is based on Sorley’s poem “The Choice”, while Glen Avich itself sparked to life after I read the achingly beautiful “Hallaig”. In this book, I quoted Sorley three times: “The dead have been seen alive” and “Every generation gone” in Inary’s epilogue are homage to “Hallaig”, while Emily’s song’s final line is inspired by another poem of Sorley’s, “Don’t Forget My Love”. Sorley’s poetry breathes inside me and will never cease to inspire my stories.

  My heartfelt thanks to Kristen Susienka, the main editor of this book, for making it bloom. You know the story inside out and you felt it nearly as much as me – for this I’m eternally grateful – and for the crazy schedule you and I kept, the phone calls and endless daily emails, thank you! Many thanks also to Janne Moller and Lindsey Fraser for helping me shape the story, and to everyone at Black & White for believing in me.

  Many thanks to my agent, Charlotte Robertson. We just started this road together, so here’s to a happy future and many triumphs!

  A million thank yous to my writerly friends. You feed my mind and warm my heart, you make me laugh and you’re there for me when the sun shines and when the rain pours. Roy Gill, Phil Miller and Gillian Philip, every success of mine is yours too. And thank you to the Twitter community for providing writers with a staffroom where we can chat and catch up with each other on days when you’ve only spoken to the postman and yourself! In particular I’d like to mention Alice Peterson, an inspiration in life and books – and whose lovely book Monday to Friday Man made me want to write a nightly skating scene under glittering lights. You know the one, Alice!

  Those of you who know me, personally or virtually, know that I’m more than a bit obsessed with music. Here are the artists who soundtracked Inary’s story: Máire Brennan, Julie Fowlis, Norrie McIver, Manran, and The Treacherous Orchestra among many. Thank you guys.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you to the many thousands of readers who read and reviewed my first Glen Avich story, Watch Over Me. It makes me so happy to know that Eilidh is in many hearts now. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your trust in me, so thanks for listening to my stories and for making them yours.

  And finally, thank you Scotland for making me yours. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

  Daniela

  Emily’s Song

  From the depth of winter

  Comes new life

  Little birds I see from my window

  And I wish I could fly

  Spring is for the living

  I will not let go of this heartbeat

  Faltering inside me

  Like a fading sun

  I’m part of it until my heart stops beating

  Mine is the sky and mine are these hills

  Until my heart stops beating

  I am like a snowdrop

  Shivering and still

  I raise my head to the sky

  This beautiful land

  Hold my hand, don’t cry

  I shall not be afraid

  And when I have to go

  Don’t forget my love

  I’m part of it until my heart stops beating

  Mine is the sky and mine are these hills

  Until my heart stops beating.

  Prologue

  Across the worlds

  Morag Kennedy waved at me from across the worlds, on a clear, sunny day in Glen Avich. She was standing in front of her whitewashed cottage, and the summer sun was shining behind her like a golden halo, making the fields gleam just as golden. I waved back and began walking towards her, hoping she would have some of those lovely sugared jellies she always gave me, but I hesitated. I knew she was ill and I didn’t want to trouble her. All of a sudden I realised I was feeling strange – my arms and legs were tingling and there was a low noise in my ears. It was a sensation alien to me, one I’d never felt before.

  Just at that moment a cluster of clouds covered the sun, and without its glare I could see Mrs Kennedy properly: she wore the flowery cotton dress she usually put on to work in her garden, her hair in a tidy bob, a cardigan held close by a simple brooch. I did a double take – Mrs Kennedy’s face seemed different. She had been ill for so long, her features becoming more and more drawn, her frame getting thinner every day. Even at my young age – I must have been about eight years old – I’d been aware of the pain and fear slowly taking over her mind and spreading over her face, in her eyes, just like the illness was spreading through her body. But that early summer evening she looked herself again. Her smile was serene, her light-blue eyes as bright as they’d been before she got sick.

  All of a sudden I heard footsteps behind me, and I turned around to see my brother stepping out of our cottage across the road. I guessed he’d been sent to call me in for dinner, and I wondered why my mum hadn’t just called me from the kitchen
window like she usually did. Maybe she wanted to make sure I would come in at once; I’d been known to run off into the fields instead, trying to steal an extra hour of play.

  “Mum wants you inside, Inary,” Logan said in a quiet voice. He was always quite serious, but at that moment he looked nearly solemn. I turned around to say goodbye to Mrs Kennedy, but she was gone.

  “Is dinner ready?” I asked my brother.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then why do I have to come in?”

  “Shush, Inary, come inside now!” My mum had appeared on our doorstep; she was slipping her apron off and smoothing her hair. When we reached her, she continued: “I want the two of you to keep an eye on Emily while Granny and I walk across the road. I won’t be gone long; time to give my condolences to Karen and Isabel.”

  I had no idea what she meant. ‘Condolences’ was too difficult a word for an eight-year-old. “Where are you going?”

  She stopped and looked at me tenderly. “Mrs Kennedy has gone to heaven, darling . . . I’m going to tell her children how sorry I am.”

  “She’s not gone to heaven. She’s here. I saw her.”

  Many years have passed, but I still remember the look in my mother’s eyes when I spoke those words. Surprise, and at the same time, a sense of recognition.

  “Where did you see her, Inary? Did you go into the house?”

  “No. She was outside, in the garden. She waved hello to me.”

  My mum kneeled down and held me very tight. She stroked my face, and her fingers smelled of the raspberries she’d picked earlier in our garden. “You’re just like your granny Margaret, aren’t you? In every way,” she whispered.

  I smiled. I loved my granny, and to be told I was just like her felt like the best compliment.

  “Let’s go, Anne,” came Granny’s voice from the doorway. “What’s wrong?” she added, having seen my mother’s face.

  “An da Shealladh,” my mum whispered. They always used Gaelic between them when they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying. “She saw Mrs Kennedy, Mum.”

  My granny’s eyes widened. She took my hand and led me to her, gently.

  “Oh, Inary . . .”

  Suddenly I was confused. I didn’t understand if I’d been very good or very bad, and why my mum and my granny were showing such emotion. I had seen Mrs Kennedy just before she died. That was all. I didn’t really understand the concept of death, anyway.

  Before I could stop myself, my eyes brimmed with tears. “What did I do?”

  “Aw, Inary, don’t be upset now, pet,” my granny said. “You’re so little, still. I was much older when it started. All you need to know for now is that you have a gift.” She cupped my face and kissed my forehead. Her eyes were shining too. “On you go and keep your sister company, dearie. We won’t be long.”

  They walked across the street to go and see Mrs Kennedy’s daughters, and Logan and I were left in charge of Emily. I went up to her room to sit with her. She was only five at the time, and she’d already gone through two heart operations. She was having a nap; her lips were slightly blue even when she was sleeping.

  I usually struggled to sit still for long, but after what had happened I felt strange and somehow disquieted, like all the energy had gone out of me.

  It took me a long time to realise that I had seen Mrs Kennedy after she’d died, that her body was lying empty in her house but her soul had gone free. It took me a long time to realise that she wasn’t waving hello to me: she was waving goodbye.

  1

  The night I fell

  Inary

  “Cassandra kept running, so fast that she felt like her lungs were about to burst. She could sense the change coming. Her muscles were cramping and her bones were aching, about to stretch and extend nearly to the point of breaking. If she didn’t find a place to change soon, her secret would be out. What would they do to someone like her? Experiment on her? Lock her in a zoo?”

  “Lock her in a zoo?” I read aloud in dismay. I took my glasses off, and for the umpteenth time that afternoon I held my face in my hands. It was the weekend and I was supposed to get on with my writing. Except my head wasn’t cooperating. I had worked on Cassandra’s story for months, but it just wasn’t going anywhere. Several thousand wasted words, several months of wasted work. Cassandra was never going to see the light of day. She was going to join the pile of the Manuscripts That Were Never Sent. And I would spend the rest of my life sorting out other people’s books and dreaming of the novel I would never write. I was an editor in a small London publisher, and I enjoyed my job – but recently, it had grown tight on me, like unshed skin.

  I sighed and folded my legs against my chest, gazing at the photograph of the hills around Glen Avich on the wall above my desk: the wild, windswept Scottish sky and the black silhouette of the pinewoods, a hint of mist resting on the land and a white, ghostly moon peering from behind a peak. It was such a beautiful picture that I could almost smell the woods and the peat fires, and feel the breeze on my skin. Looking at it usually uplifted me, but this time a sudden, inexplicable sense of dread filled me instead . . .

  “I’m home!” My flatmate’s voice resounded in the hall.

  Trying to shake off the gloomy feeling that had taken hold of me, I ran out into the hall and squeezed her tight. “Lesley!”

  “Inary!” She laughed, returning my hug. “What’s up with you?”

  “Save my life and come out for a drink with Alex and me,” I begged. “I’ve had a hard day.”

  “Oh honey, I can’t. I’m working tonight.” Lesley was a music promoter, which often meant working weekends. It also meant a lot of free tickets to gigs, which was a bonus.

  “A quick one,” I pleaded.

  “I can’t!” She glared at me, or tried to. It’s difficult to glare and smile at the same time. “Free all next weekend, though.”

  “That’s great,” I replied, and I meant it. I was looking forward to a weekend together. Lesley and I had been flatmates since I’d moved to London; she’d introduced me to one of her closest friends, Alex, and the three of us had been pretty much inseparable for the last three years.

  Living with Lesley was just perfect. I had a habit of forgetting to take care of myself, and so she fussed over me, made sure I ate regular meals, bought me Lemsip when I was ill and put up with my constant chaos. In exchange, I entertained her, or so she always said. I made her laugh and kept things cheerful. I’ve always been good at doing that, even when I don’t feel cheerful at all.

  I met Lesley the summer before moving to Aberdeen to study English at Uni, one of those seemingly unimportant encounters that end up being of huge consequence. I’d gone to visit my Aunt Mhairi in her cottage on the loch shore. It was pouring, but of course, me being me, I had forgotten my umbrella. Actually I hadn’t seen my umbrella in months.

  While I stood at my aunt’s door, getting soaked and calling her name to no avail, I saw a group of people walking towards the neighbouring cottage, a holiday let. They were clearly tourists. If a six-foot-tall man with skin the colour of black coffee and a full head of dreadlocks – Lesley’s brother Kamau, I was to learn – had been living in the village, I would have known. The impossibly tall man was accompanied by a group of young men and women, and among them there was a startlingly beautiful girl with her hair in cornrows. The group stopped in front of the cottage, occasionally looking at me, but too polite to stare. They exchanged a few words that I couldn’t hear over the noise of the rain, and then the girl with braided hair walked towards me.

  “Hello, we are just . . . um . . . We are staying at Heather Lodge there, and you’re getting soaked, so we were wondering if you wanted to wait inside, you know, out of the rain. For whoever you’re waiting for.” She had a pleasant London accent, with a touch of something else – I thought it was French, but it turned out to be the West Indies, not an easy mistake, but one I would make. I was touched by their concern. “Thank you, it’s okay. I’ll just walk ba
ck to my house. It’s not far.”

  “Oh . . . Then take this,” she said, offering me her bright-red umbrella and lifting her hood up, negotiating the mass of braids.

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to getting soaked! You need it anyway,” I said, and put my hands up.

  “Not really. Look,” she said with a smile, rummaging in her backpack. “I’ve got another one!” She produced a tiny polka dot umbrella and handed it to me.

  I laughed. “Why do you have two umbrellas?”

  “Just to be on the safe side.” She shrugged. That was Lesley in a nutshell.

  I took the polka dot one and walked away under the pouring rain. I remember turning back and seeing Lesley standing there, framed by her scarlet umbrella like a shiny exotic flower, still looking at me – she waved with a smile and turned back, following her friends inside. Little did I know then that she was to become my best friend, in spite of the distance and the fact that we came from two different worlds.

  The next day I returned to the cottage to give back her umbrella, and we ended up chatting for hours. When she went back to London we kept in touch and emailed nearly every week. Slowly our friendship deepened, and after . . . after my life in Scotland fell apart, I moved in with her. She saved my sanity.

  “So why the hard day?” she asked now, hanging her coat up and taking off her shoes, lining them side by side as she always did. Beside her things, on a wicker chair, was a messy pile of jackets, hats, mismatched gloves and the odd sock, mixed with various rubble: that was my corner.

  “I’m stressed!” I sighed.

  “It’s hard to be a writer!” she teased, walking on the wooden floor to the kitchen in her bare feet, her braids bouncing on her back.

  “It’s hard not to be one,” I replied, truthfully. I was fast losing hope of ever writing for a living. And writing had been my ambition since . . . since forever.

  “Right. The werewolf thing not going as planned?” she asked, switching the kettle on. “Want some coffee?”

  “No thanks. The werewolf thing . . . not good. I don’t know why this kind of story works in other people’s books, but when I try to write it . . .”