Free Beyond the Sea by Melissa Bailey

come up quietly behind Freya, her conversation with their parents over.
    â€˜She didn’t say anything.’ Freya managed a smile.
    â€˜Yeah, but sometimes she has a way of saying something without actually saying it.’
    Freya nodded. She showed the picture to Marta.
    â€˜Ah, our beautiful Scottish grandmammy,’ said Marta.
    â€˜Mum thinks I’m as stubborn as her. Perhaps I am.’ Maybe more so, she thought, as she imagined Maggie, suitcase in hand, sailing away from dimly lit, smoky houses on an island far away.
    â€˜So what if you are?’ Marta paused. ‘It’s not your fault, Freya. You have to accept that sometime.’
    Freya nodded, blinking away tears.
    â€˜Now come and eat. And then you need to go to bed. You look exhausted.’
    They sat down at the kitchen table and Marta dished out risotto and salad. For a while they ate in silence.
    â€˜Mum told me about the soldier’s letters.’
    â€˜Oh yeah?’
    â€˜I’d like to see them if that’s okay?’
    â€˜Sure.’ Freya nodded. She was overcome with tiredness. Conversations with her mother always made her feel that way. ‘We can read them together. But, for now, do you mind if I go to bed? I’m shattered.’
    â€˜Of course not. I’ll see you in the morning.’
    Freya woke suddenly out of sleep. The room was cold and dark and, even though she couldn’t see, she knew that the sheets were soaking. She could feel them beneath her body. Her sleep had been filled with the sound of her grandmother’s laughter, punctuated with the crying of babies, unable to feed, lingering painfully on the brink. Then there had been letters stained with salt, whether from tears or the sea she didn’t know, ships and shipwrecks. She sat upright and waited for the images from the dream to subside, then she threw off the duvet, lay back down and tried to think of something, anything else.
    For a moment she concentrated on the sound of the sea. The rise and fall, the ebb and flow. The wind was up tonight. She could tell from the surf crashing against the beach. The waves out on the ocean would be high and rolling. As her mind strove to focus on this, driving away bleaker, blacker thoughts, she heard a plaintive, melancholy noise. After a moment it was gone, dissolved by the sea. But the next instant it came again. A haunting, almost human cry. What was it? Freya sat upright again and listened intently. Perhaps it was migrating whales? But surely it was a little early in the year for them. Besides, she had heard their noise before and she was sure it was different to this. She waited for the sound to return, half wanting it not to. It was eerie, hard on the heels of her dreams. But nothing more rose out of the blackness. Eventually, she got out of bed and made her way up the hallway to the guest bedroom. The door was ajar so she pushed it open. The room was dark and still.
    â€˜Marta?’ she whispered.
    Nothing came back to her but silence. Her sister was asleep, oblivious to what she had heard.
    She closed the door and headed back down the hallway to the kitchen. At the threshold she paused again and listened. But she couldn’t hear anything beyond the usual sounds of the night. She gazed into the dimness of the kitchen’s interior, but it all looked the same as usual. As she turned around to go to bed, her hand glanced against the wooden doorway that none of them were allowed through. She ran her fingers slowly over the cool metal guarding the entrance to the lighthouse tower. Then her hand fell away and she walked on.

13
    THE DAY AFTER the phone call with her parents, Freya made the journey to the tiny village in the south of Mull.
    She knocked on the door and waited. Meanwhile, butterflies gathered in her stomach. It always took a while for him to answer, she knew. But she was surprised, after all this time, that she still felt the same way. Excitement mingled with a touch of