Free Call of the Undertow by Linda Cracknell Page A

visit.’
    Maggie’s work deadline approaching in three weeks tugged at her insides as she went about the preparations – making up a bed in what was established as her study, scrubbing at the
toilet she normally wouldn’t have to share. Then, after making sure the car would still start after three months’ grounding, she gave it a run – a cautious one that had locals
revving impatiently behind her – to Thurso for a Tesco’s shop. What was on offer at the local shop wouldn’t be good enough for Carol. On her return home she sat drinking coffee
with a slightly trembling hand and looked around at her refuge. The rhythms marched out by tides, the rising of dough, and Trothan’s visits now all seemed slightly threatened. Her sister had
been the only one she hadn’t been quite able to fence out.
    Amidst her fear, however, glimmered a faint excitement: A visitor. She made two loaves.
    Maggie saw Carol appear from the far end of the train trailing a small case on wheels. She looked out of place in the cool evening wearing a thin summer dress and flip-flops. Maggie walked
towards her, observing her sister’s frown, her eyes searching the platform. They were nearly on top of each other before Carol’s face livened into recognition.
    ‘Good grief,’ she said, holding Maggie at arm’s length. ‘What happened to your hair?’
    Carol continued to stare strangely at her. Maggie felt as if she was in some sort of disguise to her sister: the Medieval Queen or the Lion from their childhood dressing-up chest.
    ‘It was irritating,’ Maggie said. ‘Around my face. It was too long for my age anyway.’
    ‘You’re only forty, for God’s sake. It makes your face look so thin.’
    ‘Give us a hug, then,’ Maggie said. ‘The rest of me’s the same.’
    Carol drew her in tight then, the familiar smell of perfume or talc about her, the flesh of her bare arms smooth and cool.
    ‘Christ it’s cold up here,’ she said, pulling away suddenly and turning to walk up the platform.
    ‘I hope you brought walking boots?’ Maggie said.
    ‘I came for a holiday, not a boot camp.’
    Maggie imagined Carol’s bags full of sun cream, shades, trashy beach reading. When they went to Greece together, back in their 20s, Maggie had taken shorts and a T-shirt and stomped off up
the hills in rock-cracking heat each day, tutting at the inaccuracy of local maps. Meanwhile Carol languished on the beach and got chatted up by local fishermen.
    ‘I don’t often get away without Mike and the kids,’ Carol said, as they drove the coast road back to the cottage. Dunnet Head was crisp and proud on the skyline beyond the
water of the bay.
    ‘I’m flattered.’
    Carol looked around. ‘Not much here, is there? Why are there so many abandoned houses?’
    Maggie shrugged. ‘Not enough people to live in them, I suppose.’
    Carol shivered and turned up the car heater.
    She gazed around when they arrived at Flotsam Cottage and said, ‘You should have reminded me you had so little; I could have brought some of your trinkets up.’
    Maggie’s paintings, maps, ceramics had been packed up in boxes, a life’s memorabilia on hold in Carol’s garage.
    ‘I’m enjoying being a minimalist,’ she said.
    Maggie persuaded Carol into jeans, a fleece and solid shoes the next day, and they did walk a bit. In the evening they picked up fish and chips in the village, stepping their way across a
forecourt strewn with prone bicycles in bright oranges and greens. Then they went down to the water’s edge and sat on a bench on the grass near the harbour where salmon nets were stretched to
dry between tall poles. They looked across the bay to Dunnet Head.
    ‘Funny smell here,’ said Carol, sniffing.
    After eating, they walked onto the pebbly shore for a while near where flagstones used to be prepared. Maggie noticed a large lumpish form stranded halfway up the beach at the high tide mark.
She thought at first it was a live seal, but there was no flicker