For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

new life of reclusion. She was a citizen of ‘Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’ of the Outer Hebrides island chain, so her accountant told her. But all she really cared about was the typewriter sitting on the desk by the window at which she planned to live out her days in solitary bliss.

It never occurred to her that people might stop reading her books.

So now she doesn’t know what to do. Writing is the sole method by which she can live on this island undisturbed and alone. She can’t face the real world, she can’t face anything but this rock. She thinks of her mother and that sweet, encouraging smile of hers, and for the first time in years craves the squeeze of her hand. Exhaustion from the uncertainty and worry sweeps over her. She could do with a good sleep tonight. No dreams of fire and brimstone. But she knows there will be.

Every night the fire rages.

The front door, which opens straight into the lounge-cum-kitchen, blasts open as the broken latch clatters to the stone floor. Within seconds snow is thrashing around the room. She jumps to her feet and grabs some rope from a crate by the window, then feeds it through the broken hatch’s fixtures on the door and its frame. She pulls the rope tight so as to secure it shut, then stands with her back against the door, fists clenched, nails digging into the palms of her hands as her precious heat slips out of the house. She clamps her eyes shut. What’s she going to do? It’s writing or nothing at all, that’s the simple truth. Writing or nothing. If she can’t write, then she can’t—

She opens her eyes. Her gaze rises to the ceiling. A beam runs its length.

Writing or nothing.

She slowly unties the rope from around the latch. The door swings open, slamming violently against the wall. The blizzard explodes inside, snow spiralling around the woman’s delicate figure. She wraps the rope into a coil and cradles it in her arms, her eyes alternating between the hemp against her bosom and the beam above.

Writing or nothing.

She will live on the island for a further three years, during which time she’ll attempt, and fail, to salvage the rejected manuscript, as well as producing another, more dead end than the last.

Tonight, the seed has been planted. The beam is strong, solid. It would hold. Maybe death – the ultimate solitude – has been calling to her since the first day she walked along those ragged cliff edges. She doesn’t need a rope or a beam to end herself, this she knows. If she really needs out, the cliffs could do the rope’s job with far less effort. But a body torn apart on rough, razor rocks at the foot of a cliff would be a messy thing. No, the rope could provide a clean snap. Tidy and contained. Pure, simple, everything in its place.

No disorder. No disaster.

And once she’s made up her mind, once the rope is knotted and noosed and ready to go, her courier will leave a letter for her in the little wooden hut by the pier, a letter from a detective in a town called Millbury Peak. If anything or anyone could draw her back to the real world, it would be Sylvia Wakefield. Or, more specifically, the death of Sylvia Wakefield, and a promise made a lifetime ago.

But now the woman, slender and unassuming, will stand in the doorway of a centuries-old cottage, the blizzard of a lonely white Christmas blasting around her. Her eyes are now locked on the beam above, her hand gently stroking the noose in her arms. The rope will stay with her until her return to Millbury Peak, where in a secret cellar she will defeat it. The rope will break under a meagre flame, as another flame is reborn inside her. And with the snap of hemp will come the breaking of the woman she once was, and the emergence of something else begging for release, and release it shall have.

Tonight, the fire rages.

Every night the fire rages.

23

Winter came. The nights drew further into the day. The skies over Millbury Peak had continued to pour as gales persisted in blowing the rainfall to extreme angles. But today, the day of the auction, the wind and rain subsided.

A cane clicked up the pavement towards the town hall. The woman approached the pillared building, its stone columns quite out of place in the quaint country town. There was a lot out of place in this town.

Her dark glasses pointed in the direction of the sweeping cane in her gloved hand. She stopped at the foot of the steps leading to the entrance.

‘Miss Wakefield, what…’ The voice trailed off as its owner gawked at the tinted lenses and cane. ‘What happened to you, Miss Wakefield?’

Renata stared, eyes obscured. ‘Early onset glaucoma, Sandie. Doctors told me to wear these until my treatment. Don’t worry about little old me. I can still see a bit.’ She placed a weak hand on the girl’s arm, under which a bulky Dostoevsky screamed for attention. ‘And I told you, it’s Renata.’

She watched pity fall across Sandie’s face, the kind of pity one would usually reserve for a lame animal. The girl was vulnerable, sensitive, Renata knew this. It was still easy to see, however, with or without sight, the ivory tower from which Sandie looked down upon the world; unreachable, protected. Lifelong privilege had fooled her into a false sense of invulnerability, and the sight of a lesser mortal only strengthened this sense of superiority. Renata suspected that to this girl, those less fortunate were nothing more than the exhibits of a Victorian freak show, there to either make her feel better about herself, or be used to show off her own brand of self-gratifying compassion. Yet from behind her