Free Beyond the Sea by Melissa Bailey Page A

anxiety at what exactly he might say. He had always provoked this response in her since she was a small child.
    She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and looked at her watch. A minute passed and Freya began to think that she should have called ahead. But he had always seemed to know when she was coming. She was just raising her hand to knock again when the door opened silently and without warning. Instinctively she smiled. An old man stood in front of her, in a pair of faded beige cords and a shirt, of similar insipid colour, with flecks of red and green running through it. His face was brown and wrinkled, like a walnut, while his hair, in distinction, was a wiry eruption of white. For as long as she could remember, he had always looked like this; outside of time, he never seemed older or younger.
    For a few moments neither of them said anything. Freya held her breath while the man stared out into the day with milky, unseeing eyes. Then, suddenly, he smiled. ‘Freya. I was wondering when you would come. I’ve been expecting you.’
    â€˜Hello, Torin,’ she said, and felt tears suddenly close. She hadn’t appreciated until now just how much she had missed him.
    â€˜And Marta is staying with you, isn’t she?’
    â€˜Yes. For the moment.’
    â€˜That’s good.’
    â€˜She sends you her love and told me to tell you she’ll come next time.’
    Torin nodded. ‘Of course. Come nearer,’ he said softly.
    She stepped forwards and his wizened hands reached for her face. He ran his fingers gently over her skin, tracing the indents of her eyes and the lines around them and on her forehead. So many more now than there had been when they last met over a year ago. His hands moved across her head, in the same light way as a priest during a blessing, and he murmured something to himself. Freya watched the movement of his thin, pale lips. It was as if he was incanting.
    After a moment he spoke out loud again. ‘You and I could almost be twins now.’ He gave a lock of her hair a playful tug.
    She nodded and her cheeks flushed. ‘It’s one of the many things I’m still not used to. I keep forgetting …’ and her voice petered out.
    Torin stared at her for a moment and Freya felt herself becoming as transparent as a pane of glass. Then the old man’s gaze dropped and he gestured to the house. ‘Come in, my dear. So much to talk about. Did you make the frushie yourself?’
    Freya paused. ‘Yes,’ she said, after a moment, looking down at the box of apple cake dangling from her fingers. ‘Just how did you know about that?’ she continued, shaking her head.
    â€˜It’s a gift,’ said the old man, and smiled again.
    Torin had second sight. Or, at least, that’s what half of the locals said about him. The others claimed it was nothing more than a fiction. There was nothing otherworldly about his blindness. They said he had lived peaceably with his wife on a livestock farm in Ireland until she had discovered his affair with her sister (or brother, depending on the source). The betrayal broke her heart and claimed her sanity, and just before she killed herself, she poisoned Torin with a concentrated dose of formic acid, a preservative she had used in the animal feed. The result was that he lost his sight and, along with it, his capacity to love again. Other stories were less ornate. Some claimed he was the son of a witch, others the offspring of a madman. But no one knew his true heritage. He never spoke of his family or where he originally came from. And he had lived on Mull for such a long time now that people almost treated him as one of their own. Those who did not simply ignored him.
    Freya’s Scottish grandmother, Maggie, had been Torin’s neighbour for most of her life. So Freya had seen him regularly over the years – on family trips to Scotland during the school holidays; on journeys she later