Robin

ROBIN

Robin has never been afraid of the dark. Or storms. Or the strange things that sometimes happen at Blackwater Chapel. But, unlike the visitors, Robin is always prepared.

Earlier today, she made the monthly trip to town to get everything she needed. The journey through the valley and the mountains takes just over an hour there and back, and shopping has never been one of Robin’s favorite things to do. She’s a little rusty when it comes to people skills; living alone for a long time can do that to a person. The solitude of her life is something she has learned to live with, but she still worries about the strange sounds her mouth makes these days, on the rare occasions when she opens it. So she tends to keep it shut.

Being shy and being unfriendly are not the same thing, but sadly most people cannot tell the difference.

Her old Land Rover has seen better days—a bit like its owner—but it is at least easy to drive and dependable, even in the worst kinds of weather. “Town” is really just the nearest village. A sleepy place called Hollowgrove on the wild west Scottish coast. It consists of little more than a handful of houses and a “local store.” The shop—which doubles up as the post office—only stocks essential items at the best of times. Everyone starts to panic buy when they know there’s a storm on the way, and a lot of the shelves were already empty. The fresh fruit and veg were all gone, as was the bread, and toilet rolls. Why people needed to stockpile them was beyond her.

Robin snaffled the last pint of milk, some cheese, some matches, candles, and six tins of Heinz spaghetti hoops. She had at least twenty tins of Heinz baked beans at home already, and a cupboard full of nothing but Del Monte tinned mandarins, along with enough cartons of long-life milk to hydrate a primary school. Her dietary choices are nothing to do with the storm. Robin likes tinned food. And she likes to always have enough of it neatly stacked at home, to know that she wouldn’t starve anytime soon.

She added the last few jars of baby food on the shelves to her basket. The woman behind the till paused before scanning them—as always—and Robin felt herself shrink a little under the weight of her stare. She had been buying baby food in this shop for as long as anyone could remember, but people knew better than to ask about a baby. They all knew she didn’t have one.

The cashier’s name badge read: PATTY. Along with the woman’s face, it made Robin think of raw burger meat, which made her feel nauseated. Patty was in her fifties but looked older in her frumpy clothes and red apron. She had messy, boyish, blond hair, sallow skin, and dark shadows beneath her beady eyes. Robin noticed that the woman gulped a lot for no reason, which seemed only to accentuate her drooping jowls. Patty was a person who wallowed in bitchy gossip and self-pity. Robin didn’t mean to judge the woman who was judging her, she tended to steer clear of rude or unkind human beings, and she had witnessed Patty being both. The woman wore her bitterness like a badge; the kind of person who writes one-star book reviews.

Robin thought about saying hello—knowing that’s what “normal people” do. But if there was a litmus test for kindness, it was clear Patty would fail every time. So even though Robin sometimes longed to strike up a conversation, just to see if she still could, Patty was someone she didn’t care to talk to.

By the time Robin got back to the cottage, the power was already out, and the place was dark and cold. It wasn’t much—a small stone building with two rooms, a thatched roof, and an outside toilet. But it was hers. And it was as close to a home as she had these days. The cottage had been built by hand more than two hundred years ago, for the priest who looked after the chapel when it was still used for its original purpose. Some of the thick white stone walls have crumbled in places, to reveal dark granite bricks. The fingerprints of the men who made them are still visible, two centuries later, and it always cheers Robin up to think that nobody disappears completely. We all leave some small part of ourselves behind.

Robin’s mother sometimes slept in this cottage. Years ago, when Robin was just a child and things were … difficult at home. Her mother had a key and would come here whenever she needed to run away, or hide. She was a happy woman trapped inside of a sad one. She loved to sing, and cook, and sew, and had the most wonderful ability to make everything—including herself—look pretty. Even this sad little cottage. Robin would follow her here—she always took her mother’s side in any argument—and they would sit together in front of the fire. Comforting each other without words, and waiting for the latest marital storm to blow over. The place became a ramshackle sanctuary for them both. They made it cozy, with homemade curtains and cushions, candles for light, and blankets for warmth. But all of that was long gone when Robin returned years later. Just like Robin’s mother. Nothing but the dust of a memory.

The thatch is a little more recent than the cottage’s walls, and not without holes, but they can be repaired when the weather gets warmer. Which it will, because it always does. That’s the thing Robin has learned about life now that she is older: the world keeps turning, and the years go by, regardless of how much she wishes she could turn back time. She wonders about that a lot: why people only learn to live in the moment when the moment has passed.

Robin doesn’t have much in the way of furniture. Her bed is made from a series of wooden pallets that she found on the side of the road, but it’s surprisingly comfy thanks to a thick layer of woolen blankets and homemade cushions. In the room with the fireplace—where she spends most of her time to keep warm—there is a small table with a wonky leg, and an old leather armchair that she rescued from a dumpster in Glencoe. Having belongings that were her own was more important to Robin than how they looked or where they came from. She didn’t have much when she arrived here, just a suitcase filled with her favorite things. Robin left everything else behind.

The plates, cutlery, cups, and glasses in the cottage were all borrowed—some might say taken—from cafes and pubs she had visited in the Highlands. Robin never saw it as theft when she slipped the dirty items into her bag, because she always left a tip. She took a guest book from a tea room once, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe all the friendly, handwritten messages inside made her feel less lonely. Robin collected all of the things she needed before the money ran out. She didn’t have everything she wanted, but that was a different story. The cash she had left was kept for emergencies only, and this was definitely one of those.

With no electricity for the foreseeable future, she lights some candles before building a little fire in the grate for warmth. Then she ties a can of baked beans above the flames. Hot meals are important in cold weather, and this isn’t the first time Robin has cooked for herself in a storm. When the tin is empty, she’ll wash it out, carve two eyes and a smile in the tin, then use it as a candle holder. There are tin-shaped faces all over her little home. Some happy, some sad. Some angry.

Wearing mismatching oven gloves, she removes the can from above the fire and eats the hot beans straight from the tin. It saves on both time and washing up. When she has finished her own dinner, she opens a jar of baby food and spoons the contents into a bowl. She knows he’ll eat when he is hungry.

Robin eases into the old leather armchair. She’s wearing fingerless mittens indoors, but her hands are still freezing. She throws another log on the fire, then searches inside her cardigan pocket for the wooden pipe, holding on to it like an old friend. It wasn’t always hers—something else she borrowed. Sometimes it’s enough just to feel it, but not tonight. She takes it out, along with a small, round tin of tobacco. It’s a Rattray’s pipe, made in Scotland, just like her. A classic Black Swan.

She unscrews the tin, and sprinkles three pinches of tobacco just like he taught her when she was a little girl. It feels like feathering a nest before burning it down. A few strands fall onto her lap, where they stay, abandoned by unsteady hands. She notices the dry skin and bitten nails as she strikes a match, so closes her eyes briefly, to hide herself from herself, while she enjoys the smell of the pipe and the nicotine hit she’s been craving all day.

Robin stares at the chapel in the distance. From her window she can see that the lights are still on. Unlike her little cottage, the chapel still has power, because the owner suffered too many Scottish storms and installed a generator a few years ago. For all the good it did them. She listens to the radio while she waits; Robin is good at waiting. Patience is the answer to so many of life’s questions. She sits and she waits, even when the pipe is empty, and the fire has burned itself out. She listens to the voices on the radio—as familiar as old friends—while they report that the storm has already resulted in several road accidents. Robin wonders if the visitors know what a lucky escape they’ve had, managing to get here in one piece. When she glances out of the window again, and sees that the chapel is in complete darkness, she thinks that the visitors’ good luck might be about to change.

Maybe it has run out altogether, only time will tell.

Robin hears something then, tiny footsteps in the gloom behind her. The bowl of baby food is empty. It’s been licked completely clean and that makes her happy. Company is company, in whatever form it takes.