Entry Island

He stood up and crossed to the bed and sat down to open and search back through the diaries until he found what he was looking for. And there it was, finally. His ancestor’s account of losing Ciorstaidh on the quay, just as he had dreamt it. Except for the gift of the ring she had given him in the moments before their separation. A family heirloom that she had taken in case they needed something to sell. Part of a matching set, including a pendant that hung around her neck.

He searched through the following journals until he found the moment on Grosse Île when his ancestor had given the Mackinnons the ring. Almost as an afterthought. Guilty that the sacrifice had been Michaél’s and not his. Sime had not remembered that at all. Then, as he flicked through the pages in front of him, he realised that they were full of detail he did not recall from his granny’s reading. Maybe she had paraphrased or edited as she had read. And he knew that someday soon he was going to have to sit down and read them all through from beginning to end. After all, this was his story, too. His history.

Suddenly it occurred to him that he had no idea what had happened to Michaél. Was that the story his parents had not wanted their grandmother to read them? But he would look for it later. There were just two short entries left in the final diary, and he took it back to the desk to settle down in the pool of light and read them.

Chapter forty-one

Saturday, 25th December 1869

On this Christmas day, in the coldest, darkest month of the year, it gives me the most extraordinary pleasure to record that shortly after dinner tonight, I proposed to Catrìona Mackinnon, the child whom I brought into this world twenty-two years ago, and with whom I have fallen deeply in love. To my inexpressible joy she has accepted, and we are to be married in the spring, just as soon as the snows have melted and the warmth of the sun brings life back to the land.

Sunday, 13th August 1871

This is the last entry I shall ever make. I write it to record the birth of my baby son, Angus, named after my father. And the death of his mother, Catrìona, in childbirth. At one and the same time the happiest and the worst day of my life.

Chapter forty-two

I

A soft knocking at his door pierced his emotions. He stood up. ‘Yes?’ he said, and the door opened. Annie was still wearing her coat. She looked at him with concern, and crossed the room to wipe away his silent tears.

‘You’ve read to the end, then.’

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

‘So sad,’ Annie said. ‘To have gone through everything he did, only to lose her in childbirth.’

And Sime thought about his own child, lost even before it had been born. He said, ‘What I don’t understand is how Kirsty Cowell comes to be in possession of the pendant. They’re matching pieces, Annie.’

She took his hand and looked at his ring. ‘If only it could speak to us,’ she said. Then she looked up. ‘Come on, I’ve got something to show you.’

They climbed creaking stairs to the attic over the garage. Cold electric light from above cast angled shadows across the steps, and dust billowed through it as Annie raised the trapdoor to let them into the attic. Almost the entire floor space was taken up with boxes and trunks and packing cases, old furniture covered in dust-sheets, paintings and mirrors stacked against the walls.

‘Like I told you, just about everything of value that came from Mom and Dad’s place is up here,’ Annie said. ‘And when Granny died I had all her things brought here too, at least until I could decide what to do with them.’ The accumulated detritus of dead people’s lives was mired in the deep shadows thrown by a single naked light bulb. ‘I hadn’t been into the attic in years,’ she said. ‘Until after you phoned, and I came up here to find the diaries.’

She squeezed her way through tea chests and cardboard boxes, and big pieces of antique furniture loosely covered with tattered bedsheets.

‘I noticed the pictures stacked against the far wall at the time. I didn’t pay any attention then, but thinking about it again today I realised they must have been the paintings that came from Granny’s house. The ones that hung on the walls there when we were kids. And it occurred to me that they might have been Sime Mackenzie’s.’

He followed her to the far end of the attic and a stack of a dozen or more framed pictures leaning face-in against the wall.

‘While you were reading the diaries I thought I’d come up and take a look.’