After that walk up and down a steep crag, I sat beside the fire and stretched my legs. The hotel’s luxurious warmth soothed my aching calves. A glass of mulled wine, passed to me by another woman in our party, diluted some of the discomfort of my mind.
Darkness fell outside and someone said, ‘It’s time for a story or two.’
Others in our little group laughed but no storyteller came forth. I kept a straight face, which was a mistake.
‘There’s something in your mind,’ one of the men said. ‘Go on, tell us.’
There seemed no harm in saying I’d been thinking of my daughter, whose favourite places included a Scottish crag or several. I told them how we used to walk together.
‘Used to?’ I was asked. ‘And now?’
That’s when I lied about where she lived, adding, ‘We don’t see each other often. I’ve no fireside tales, I’m afraid.’
The conversation moved elsewhere.
During our group’s walk a north-westerly wind had bitten at my lungs. During our descent from the crag, small boggy pools at its base had shone black and glassy like mementoes of cold, deep loch water.
In the hotel I must have appeared wrapped in reminiscence, because no one interrupted while I gazed into the fire. My daughter and her husband had lived in a pretty, rented cottage beside a Scottish loch, where sunshine often lit the south-facing house. But on my visits I’d found the surroundings gloomy. Beside the loch, a narrow pebbled beach plunged into the water. I thought how little light there’d be under the surface, even a few metres from the shore. The loch’s depth had been measured but what that ravine might look like was outwith my imagination.
My daughter became pregnant and had a little boy. Oh, what a joyous day six months ago when I drove to the hospital, heart pattering, to see my grandson. In hindsight, my daughter was too quiet, too distant from the start. Talking therapies didn’t help her bond with her son. Anti-depressants didn’t lift her. She stopped speaking. A planned admittance to a hospital met an administrative delay.
I’d never envisaged her pouring petrol inside the cottage while her husband and son were out for a walk. That stone cottage had timbers dry enough to stoke any blaze. My daughter, despite mitigating circumstances, was convicted of wilful fire raising and sent to a secure mental health hospital. She’s still there.
‘I did it to get help,’ she told me on one of my rare visits, for she didn’t want to see me often. ‘I thought the loch was my friend. Its darkness – that’s how I felt. But you’d never liked it and I couldn’t explain.’
I should have realised more, understood better.
Beside the hotel fire, someone started a ghost story and the party waited for pleasurable shivers. I watched the flames licking the logs, their leaps behind and around one another. I was already haunted.
About the author
Elizabeth Leyland writes short stories and microfiction and lives in the UK. She has been published by CaféLit, 50-Word Stories, Paragraph Planet and Fairfield Scribes among others.
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