passing up the luggage bags for the two of them to carry between them. The rest of the children’s toys and sports kit would have to come up on separate trips.
They followed the grassy path through the trees, the girls stepping onto old stumps, picking up jumbo fir cones and stopping to nibble on wild blueberries. It had taken Bell several weeks on her first visit to successfully navigate her way through the forest to the Mogerts’ house without circumventing the entire island, doubling back on herself or inadvertently dropping in on the neighbours. But her eye had found the clues eventually – look for the broken branch, go past that fallen tree, turn left at the salty marsh where the frogs chirrup at night.
It was never dark anywhere here in the summer months, but light only fell in narrow blades at the very centre of the island, cutting past the trees in whisper-thin arrows as they wound through the slim-legged trunks one after the other. Linus was managing to carry a couple of bags too, the guitar slung across his body, but Bell seemed to have the heaviest load and her muscles were burning as she held and braced them at awkward angles. The cut-through across to the other side was probably only an eight-minute walk from the jetty to the cabin, but every minute felt quadruple that. She felt a wave of relief when the sea gradually emerged as a backdrop to the trees, growing ever bluer and brighter, until eventually they stepped out of the shady woods and the blue sea met the bright sky again.
‘Thank God,’ she groaned, letting the bags drop to the ground with a soft thud as the girls immediately shrieked at the sight of their familiar playground and ran down to the gentle scoop of sand. Tilde found a driftwood stick, and proudly wrote her name. Linus sank onto the bottom step of the deck and watched them, left out and looking overdressed now in his jeans and grey sweatshirt.
Bell looked back at her home for the next six weeks, bar weekends when she could escape back to the city for some much needed time out with her friends. Built on the site of the original cabin that had belonged to Max’s grandparents and parents – and which had eventually succumbed to a storm – the Mogerts’ place was a largish, modernist cabin with black pine cladding and walls of huge sliding plate-glass windows. It was surrounded on all sides by a large deck set on a bed of smooth rocks. Their shallow cove was on the lee shore on the south-westerly side of the island, away from the main nautical thoroughfare. Good for privacy, less so for prevailing winds.
Hanna walked up the steps and over the deck, reaching into a battered, fraying fishing creel propped up against the back wall that looked distinctly at odds with the pristine minimalism of the rest of the house. It was an inherited piece too; much of the ‘kit’ here was – repaired fishing nets, sun-bleached buckets, hand-whittled rods – but inside the newly built house, everything was pale blonde and white, the furniture bent wood and minimal. It was so sparse that in winter the effect would have been cold and severe, but the family never came out before June, and for summer it was perfect.
Hanna slid open the door, having ‘aired’ the place on a weekend in May with Max, checking for any over-winter repairs that needed seeing to and stocking up the larder with non-perishables. ‘Home sweet home,’ she sighed, stepping in with a curious gaze before beginning to slide back the rest of the walls.
Bell picked up the bags for one last time and lumbered them into the house. With all the doors opened on three sides, the breeze blew happily through the cabin, carrying in the sharp briny tang of the sea, dragonflies darting in curiously, the hiss of the tide sinking into the sand, the girls’ chattering voices . . . Outside became inside here; it was all one.
Linus went straight to his room, Hanna’s eyes following him as she let the taps run for a moment. She looked tired.
Bell took the girls’ bags to their bedroom and immediately began unpacking their clothes. They were so tiny that even to the power of two, they took up no space at all. She opened the window in there and shook the duvets, plumping and turning over the pillows, checking for