It's Been a While

(Back to Port Brokeferry... feels like I have left this a while. Here is Kerry, the woman who travels out to see the seals at The Snag and who buys scones and bread from Callum's bakery shop... only there's been changes in her life recently.)

KERRY’S LETTER NOT FROM WARD

Kerry couldn’t sleep. Not more than a couple of hours, anyway. Been that way for months now. Since things changed. She should go to the doctor. That’s what her mother would have told her. He has pills for to help you sleep. That’s what her mother would have said. Kerry had too much on her mind, that’s why she was awake. No amount of pills was going to make all that go away, the things she worried about. She hadn’t told her mother.

Kerry got up. Made no sound, except the small crack of her bones and the noise she makes in the back of her throat with the effort of moving. She crept into the back of the house and closed the kitchen door before putting on the light. She sat down at the table. There was a letter propped up against an empty milk jug. She hadn’t opened it. She knew what it was and could guess what it said.

The clock on the wall told her it was ten past three. Always three or thereabouts. Kerry picked up a pen and on a clean sheet of paper she began writing. She wrote out columns of figures and scribbled calculations in the spaces on the page. Things never added up the way she wanted them to. Never the way she needed them to. Not any more. Not since Ward had left.

Her head was dizzy from all the counting these days. She’d had to make changes. Callum had noticed. ‘Just the bread?’ he’d said to her only last week. He’d already put two scones into a bag, one fruit and one plain. ‘Just the bread,’ she’d had to say. Lillian had thought she was maybe not well. She’d said as much.

Edwin had missed her on ‘The Silver Herring’ the day before. He’d kept back the boat for ten minutes to wait for her. He laughed about it when he saw her in the street later that day and said how sorry he was that she had missed the trip. He felt sure the seals had missed her too.

Ward still sent something. Not as much as at first, but something. She’d begun by putting it into a separate account. Savings for a rainy day. Something put by for when things were harder. Then she’d had to dip into it. A little each week. Then not a little.

Magnus at the bank had asked to speak to her about her financial affairs. That’s what he called it. He smiled when he said it, kindly, and said he could maybe help. He meant well, she understood that. Financial affairs; it sounded odd to her, like something that should be kept secret.

And now this letter. Not from Ward. From the woman he’d left Kerry for. She’d written her name on the back of the envelope and their shared address, hers and Ward’s. Kerry knew what it said. Felt certain that she did.

On the paper she'd written on she crossed some things out. More changes she would have to make if ends were to meet.