say, sitting her down on a kitchen chair, trying to calm her, although I feel anything but calm myself. ‘They’re putting out a search for the Bonnie Stuart. His last radio contact was from just this side of the Shiant Isles – he said he was heading for home ahead of the storm.’
I try hard to stay calm and to push from my mind an image of the Blue Men of the Minch, those malicious storm kelpies, slithering out of their caves in the cliffs along the edge of the islands, intent on snatching sailors from their boats and pulling them down to their deaths beneath the surge of the hungry waves.
I hold Bridie’s hands, but can’t stop their trembling. ‘Something’s not right,’ she insists. ‘I can feel it.’
Her fear is infecting me. I see Davy in my mind’s eye, his grey-blue eyes clouded with hurt when he left the cottage the other night, and I hear an echo of his quiet, sad words beneath the roar of the storm: I’m not trying to rescue you, Lexie. I’m trying to love you. I have a sudden vision of the torn and twisted remains of the lifeboat on the beach at Black Bay, and I know I have to do something, anything. I can’t sit here knowing he’s out there somewhere.
‘Bridie, stay and look after Daisy for me, would you? I’m going to go to the point.’
She nods, as if this is the sensible thing to do in the middle of the night with a force 10 gale blowing. But then we both know, without saying it, that if he’s coming back from the Shiants he’ll be heading into Loch Ewe past Furadh Mor.
‘Take his Land Rover,’ is all she says. ‘You’ll be able to get along the track. Be careful, Lexie.’
I nod, tucking my pyjama trousers into my wellies and grabbing Mum’s coat from the hook. As I fasten it, my fingers brush against the sweetheart brooch which I’ve pinned to it, and the feel of the silver beneath my fingertips gives me a little jolt of courage, reminding me that Mum made this same journey on a storm-lashed night all those years ago.
I pull up next to Davy’s Land Rover, which is parked in front of his house, the keys left in the ignition as usual. The engine splutters once, twice, then turns over and I shove the car into gear. The clutch takes a bit of getting used to and I jolt on to the road, the driving rain hammering on the metal of the roof. I wrench on the steering wheel as the wind buffets the vehicle, trying to blow it into the ditch. Thankfully there’s no one else out on the road tonight. I glance up to the heavens, wishing there was at least a glimmer of starlight to keep me company, but the storm clouds have blotted out the constellations that Davy pointed out to me the other night. Without them, how can he find true north? I just pray that the compass on the Bonnie Stuart will be pointing out a steady course against the wildness of the sea.
At last I reach the croft houses at Cove and the end of the road. I crawl a little more cautiously along the track, unable to see anything beyond the beam of the headlights. I’m horribly aware that the ground starts to fall away steeply to my right here, as the full force of the storm howls around me. At last I’ve gone as far as I dare, and I jerk to a stop, yanking on the handbrake. I dip the headlights for a moment, hunching forward over the steering wheel to wipe the condensation from the windscreen with my coat sleeve, scanning the darkness for any faint glimmer of light. And then I see it. A tiny pinprick, as faint as starlight, that appears momentarily and then disappears again as the waves overwhelm it. I wait, holding my breath, straining my eyes. And it appears again. Definitely a boat! But it’s on the wrong side of Furadh Mor and it’s close to the coast, turning in too soon, unable to see the vicious teeth of the headland in the darkness.
Frantically, I switch the headlights back to full beam, conscious that the light seems to peter out all too close to the car, swallowed by the darkness. But if the boatman – whether or not it’s the Bonnie Stuart out there – glances up, he’ll see