Island Skye Read online

  Island Skye

  By Fox Brison

  Bold Fox Publishing

  First Edition: September 2016

  This is a work of fiction. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express permission. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Synopsis

  Skye Donaghie is having a bad day; she gets stranded above the North Sea, her girlfriend dumps her and her neighbour is run over by her car – whilst fishing.

  The one saving grace is she reconnects with Natalie Jeffries, the gorgeous soccer playing sister of her best friend, Sara, when she comes to the rescue. However, the reunion proves bittersweet as it brings back memories Skye has spent the past decade trying to forget.

  Faced with a family who abandoned her and a friend who doubts the relationship, Skye must face some home truths and conquer her demons or she risks losing everything.

  Chapter 1

  Skye

  So quickly, what’s your favourite time of the day? Is it the evening when you can put your feet up and sip a nice merlot whilst binge watching Orphan Black on Netflix? Or that extra ten minute break you weren’t expecting when your boss is late back from a meeting? Maybe it’s like mine, the early morning, when the darkness is slowly dissolving and the sky is a riot of colours, the empty void of night replaced by glorious golds and soft sepia clouds wreathing a waking sun? And what about location? Is the place you’re in and the person you’re with central to perfect timing?

  I found out last night that location and timing is everything.

  ***

  Dawn was finally breaking over the North Sea coastline, heartily welcomed by a cacophonous chorus of gulls and guillemots, a raucous discord I hurriedly tuned out. The warped wooden timbers, parched from the twin threats of salt and sun, protested with creaking groans as gentle waves lapped against the posts holding me precariously, yet safe, above the calm waters.

  “I still can’t believe this happened.” My partner’s grouchy voice was a sharp reminder I wasn’t alone. Seriously, I wish I was. “I can’t believe you grew up not ten bloody miles away and still-”

  “Stacy, please, just give it a rest,” I interrupted. “You don’t need to say it again, I know, alright?” Oh, yes I knew alright. I knew exactly what she was about to say, because Stacy was never backward in coming forward when it came to voicing her dissatisfied opinion in my direction, especially these last few months. “I feel awful, truly I do. And I really am sorry, I made a mistake. But you were the one who wanted to visit Bamburgh Castle.”

  “Excuse me,” I was given a look of scathing incredulity, “I see your selective memory is in full working order, unlike my car. Let’s recap, shall we?” Oh God, please no, not this, not this morning. But my silent pleading was ignored and Stacy was indeed launching into one of her famous you said I said soliloquies. “As usual I said one thing, and somehow you heard and remembered another. I said I wanted to visit Alnwick Castle to see where Harry Potter was filmed. But you, being your usual tight wadded self, wouldn’t pay to go to Alnwick Castle. Oh no. You, in your infinite wisdom, wanted to see Inner Farne, a piddlin little rock in the middle of the sea where St bloody Cuthbert died… again!”

  Okay, so we’re playing the blame game. I was well schooled in this particular sport, I had played it all my life, and was still totally hopeless at it. There was a list of reasons as long as my arm as to why I readily accepted culpability for any given situation; perhaps having a father who was quick to temper and even quicker to hit whichever of his three children was closest to him had something to do with it. Or maybe it was losing my mother two days after I was spectacularly outed. Generally my guilt remained hidden beneath my good-humour and intense focus on my job. It probably wasn’t healthy, but it was who I was.

  However, a lack of sleep coupled with my innate need to justify my actions overwhelmed my normal factory setting (accept blame, placate other person with apologies) and instead I switched to Skye Donaghie’s default setting number three - a touch defensive. “Right, okay, yes we should have gone to Alnwick Castle and Gardens, where the only thing in bloom would have been daffodils, maybe, maybe if we were lucky, a couple of tulips. And after a five minute walk in the gardens with you complaining about mud, puddles and the cold, we would have gone into the castle, a castle which, to be fair sweetheart, doesn’t hold a candle to the one at Warwick which, if you recall rightly, you said was not only underwhelming but one of the most tedious trips we’d taken together. And that was with a jousting display and mediaeval feast,” I added sarcastically. “Then finally thanks to your favourite book, oh no, wait, you haven’t read ‘em have you? No. So thanks to your favourite film, Harry effin Potter, the place would have been jam packed with tourists. The only thing we’d have seen all morning was the back of people’s heads as we queued – and I know how much you despise waiting.” I was lying; Alnwick Castle Gardens would have been a rainbow of colours, the late spring sunshine a natural spotlight lifting the dreary and dingy into the vibrant and vivid. But honestly? I could think of better ways to spend thirty quid than listening to Stacy moaning about the length of queues and how ridiculous everything and everyone was.

  I mentally winced.

  I was being overly harsh. Would it really have been such a waste to spend thirty quid to make my girlfriend happy? Sadly, it was indicative of our relationship, a relationship that was on its last legs (“Last sea legs more like,” I muttered with a quiet chuckle) I just didn’t have the balls to say it.

  I hated confrontation, in fact I did almost anything to avoid it, so I quickly tried to lessen the tension which was so thick it would give a MacDonald’s chocolate milkshake a run for its money. “Look, I know yesterday didn’t exactly end as I had hoped, but you enjoyed the boat trip to Inner Farne. And we had a nice dinner, didn’t we?”

  “Boat trip? Fun? When I stopped feeling sick, I suppose it was okay. But I wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion.” No, that was true, she hadn’t been. Designer jeans and cashmere are not a particularly good mix on a boat trip in the North Sea. Nor are four inch heels. “And a nice dinner? Is this you trying to be funny again, Skye? Fish and chips, which I’m sure is molecular gastronomy for you, a gravy loving northern girl, eaten in what I could only describe as working men’s club, does not qualify as a nice dinner. Let’s face it, darling, you were being cheap. End of.”

  And yes that was the end of the discussion as far as I was concerned. As with the gulls, I tuned out Stacy’s whingeing and for the millionth time, checked for mobile service
– still nothing, nada, nowt. I pulled my laptop out of my bag, pressed the power button and tentatively held my breath. Thankfully, it whirred and beeped into life. Long drawn out silences whilst I worked was definitely my modus operandi when it came to avoidance strategies. I needed a time out; there was a storm brewing and not just over the North Sea.

  My finger was poised over the mousepad, but before I’d even had the chance to type one hundred words in anger, I felt a foreboding presence behind me. I love the word foreboding, it’s so threatening, so ominous, like the music used in old B movie horror films just as the psycho begins to climb the stairs. However, this morning it wasn’t sinister it was damn right irritating because it meant Stacy was hovering and reading over my shoulder, something I cannot stand, a fact she was well aware of.

  Which is why, I’m guessing, she did it so often.

  When we first started dating I relished Stacy’s distractions. I mean I had a pulse, and we’d usually end up ripping off each other’s clothes and stumbling into bed. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment things changed, the precise moment I changed. It was gradual, but after a few months her plaintive cry of ‘you’re always working and don’t you love me anymore’ became the cause of an irritated eye-roll rather than a siren call challenging me to prove her wrong.

  I winced again and this time it was a physical act.

  The truth of the matter is that I suck at relationships, always have, always will. I never invest enough of myself in them, have never met that special someone who might challenge me to risk my heart. My mind drifted on the breeze. I was finding it more and more difficult to focus, to crawl out of the funk I found myself in. The ennui riddling my life wasn’t Stacy’s fault, not by a long shot, but something was missing. I wasn’t only dissatisfied, I was disappointed with myself. It had even reached the point, the breaking point, where I was beginning to find my job, the one true love of my life, an unpleasant chore. Losing the will to work was the main reason I begged my faculty chair to allow me the year off; I needed to finish my thesis and recharge my batteries.

  “A glorious mount? This place,” Stacy waved her hand angrily towards the island, “is a pimple… no… wait… a pus filled boil oozing from the sea.” My temper was now at a slow simmer, the sort that gently rolls below the surface, the sort that doesn’t need much extra heat before erupting into an incoherent froth of vitriol and bile. I took a dep breath and turned my head to look through the tiny window of the hut which framed the view beautifully. The coast had a calming effect on me, and I imagined the dunes warming as the sun’s rays caressed their golden heights; I licked my top lip and tasted salt, no longer sure if it was the sea air or the taste of my quiet tears. The background on my laptop flickered and two curly-headed, gap-toothed boys sat smiling at me.

  I sighed.

  Because not even my adorable nephews could lift the blues.

  This holiday was make or break time for our relationship, yet for whatever reason, I was doing everything I could to make it fracture into a million irrevocable pieces. The clouds in the distance started to look threatening, purple bruises on a perfect sky, and my stomach growled loudly. Is Mother Nature having a laugh? Could things get any worse?

  Apparently they could.

  “Ahoy there!” a voice called and my perfect view was spoiled by Tommy Morton’s head bobbing up and down. I went to school with Tommy. He was a boarder along with the rest of the islanders due to the fact Lindisfarne became completely cut off when, twice a day, the tide covered the causeway linking it to the Northumbrian shore. The islanders owned a reputation of being a little, well, insular I guess would be the politest way of describing it. My uncle called it incestuous, but he’s a judgemental prick – or at least he was, I haven’t spoken to him or most of my family for ten years not since… I shook my head. I couldn’t go there. Not now. Not again.

  “Hey, Tommy, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you – and I bet you never thought you’d hear those words coming from my mouth,” I called back almost hysterically. “Give us a minute will you?” It’s not that I didn’t like Tommy, actually, he was my best friend’s, Sara Jeffries, cousin, but I’d never really forgiven him for the rather cruel ‘goosey grey shirt’ nickname he’d bestowed on me at school. I don’t think he meant it maliciously, he was just a smart arse kid proud of his class clown crown, however, the feeling of shame and embarrassment those three little words caused me, well, it still stings a little even to this day.

  “Well, well, welllll, if it isn’t the professor hersel’. Geez, the tide tables musn’t be right. I mean, ye did read them, didn’t you, Skye?” I heard the sarcastic glee in his voice, his words rocking gently on the breeze. Still a piss taking little shit I see Tommy, and I laughed derisively. The islanders loved when this happened. They tolerated tourists and depended upon them for their livelihoods, but these little mishaps kept the locals amused for weeks at a time and made the modern day invasions bearable.

  Sticking my head through the window of the hut perched precariously in the middle of the sea, I looked down; a flash of red caught my eye. I could just about make out the roof of Stacy’s cherry red convertible below.

  I couldn’t see the rest of it because it was submerged under five foot of water.

  Tommy stood in the bow of his boat, holding the rudder on his outboard motor loosely. I swear Tommy’s boat was Tommy personified; a little rough around the edges, the paint job needing a bit of tender loving care, the planks of wood holding it together creaking and worn. But it bobbed happily, almost mockingly, along the waters of life, ploughing furrows as it made its way back to port. Still, five thirty am on a Sunday morning was not the best time to deal with a Morton.

  “Give Skye a break, Tommy.” A much warmer voice alerted me to the fact Tommy wasn’t alone. I squinted as the early morning sun nearly blinded me. The woman, and I knew she was a woman from her voice, was cast in shadow, but something about her was familiar. However, without either my contacts or milk-bottle thick glasses, my incredibly blurry vision was hindering any attempt to place her, and for the time being she would have to remain faceless and nameless. Apart from her clothing two other things were obvious to even my incredibly short sight; she was tall, at least four inches taller than my 5ft 6in frame, and her thick chocolate hair, despite being short, made me want to run my fingers through it.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, completely embarrassed by the situation and my totally inappropriate thoughts.

  “I’m not getting into that… that…” Stacy piped up behind me, words, thankfully, escaping her for the moment, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. My utter mortification may have escaped my oblivious girlfriend, but the mystery woman on the boat (who the hell is she?) clearly caught it, and I sensed her amusement.

  “Ye stay there, then,” Tommy said matter-of-factly, “no skin off my nose. Tide should be out again soon enough. You can walk back.”

  “Walk? Skye?” Stacy’s voice could have cut a hole through triple glazed bulletproof windows. “Walk?”

  I backed Stacy into the hut. “Look, baby, once we get back to the cottage,” I said, placing my arms around her waist, “I’ll phone the insurance company. I’ll even claim off mine so you don’t lose your no claims. But please, darling, please just get into Tommy’s boat.”

  “Fine!” she huffed, and placing her brand new Michael Kors handbag on her arm, climbed down the short wooden ladder and into the rocking boat. I packed up the rest of our scant belongings, my laptop and the fleece blanket Stacy had slept under (alone) and suddenly I froze. I didn’t want to leave. The peace and serenity of being in the middle of a calm North Sea was somehow allowing me respite from a future that, despite my best efforts to stall it, was racing towards me.

  I looked at the boat.

  Then I looked towards the island.

  Yep, the hut was looking far more attractive by the minute, even with a storm on the horizon.

  “For goodness sake, Skye, will you hurry up!” Stacy shrieked, “
I’m turning blue here.” Actually, she was starting to take on a grey… no hang on, a green tinge.

  “Jesus!” Tommy stuttered backwards as Stacy’s vomit splattered his black wellingtons. Okay so it was now official, my life was in the toilet. Slumped over the side of the boat, Stacy’s retching managed to drown out the gulls circling above. If I didn’t know better I’d say they were carrion birds waiting to pick over the bones of my terminal love life.

  I climbed into the boat carefully avoiding Stacy’s partially digested dinner from the night before, and tentatively rubbed her back. “When we get home I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and you can curl up under the duvet on the sofa. I’ll even watch that programme you like, the one about the vampires.” Stacy shrugged me off, angrily, then gagged again. I clambered over netting to the prow of the boat, sat down, closed my eyes, and hoped I’d wake up from this god awful nightmare.

  It didn’t work.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and opened my eyes. “Hey, Skye, how’s it going?”

  It took me a moment to answer; I was rapidly trying to blow away the insomnia cobwebs and figure out if this woman was for real. “Seriously?” I muttered caustically, “are you blind?”

  The woman chuckled slightly nervously. “Sorry. Ask a stupid question.... Sara said I might run into you, although I don’t think she imagined it would be like this.”

  “Sara?” Oh. Shit.

  Natalie Jeffries.

  My best friend’s younger sister.

  My best friend’s gorgeous younger sister who played soccer for England, and was on every lesbian’s ‘Top Ten Women I’d Shag’ list. She’d even made it onto After Ellen’s Hot 100. Not that I’d googled her. Or voted. Or anything stalkerish like that. Oh hell, so what if I did? I had to support home grown talent... right?

  Right then Stacy let out a pathetic whimper as we watched her car drift slowly past us. She loved that car, probably, no, definitely more than me, and from the scathing scowl she shot in my direction, I would soon be hearing the thud of the earth hitting my coffin.