In Beautiful Ugly, Grady Green’s wife has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Grieving, he decides to travel to a remote Scottish island to find some peace and healing. Instead, he finds something entirely disturbing. . .

Beautiful Ugly
By Alice Feeney
Published by Macmillan

‘Can I help you?’ she asks in a thick Scottish accent.

‘Hope so. I’m trying to get to Amberly.’

She stares at me for a long time as though she doesn’t understand what I said or thinks I am dangerously stupid. ‘Sorry, I canny help. It’s out of season.’

I stare back. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It means the Isle of Amberly Trust owns the island. It is home to thousands of protected trees and a community of just twenty-five people. Visitors are permitted on the island only from May to July. Even if I could let you on board— which I can’t— you’d have no way of getting back again for days and nowhere to stay—’

‘But I do,’ I insist. ‘I’ve been invited to stay for three months.’

Her makeup- free eyes narrow into suspicious slits. ‘By who?’

‘Kitty Goldman. She owns a cabin there.’

She shakes her head. ‘Never heard of her, and I’ve lived on Amberly all my life.’

‘She inherited it from Charles Whittaker.’

The exceptionally tall woman stares at the island in the distance before studying my face, and her expression is hard to read. Then she smiles.

‘Charlie’s bonnie old writing cabin? Good for you. Well, you’d best grab your things and get on board then. Your car should be safe parked up here for a wee while at least.’

‘Can I not take the car on the ferry? It looks like there’s room.’

‘Visitors are not permitted to bring vehicles to the island.’

‘What? But I have all my stuff . . .’

The woman’s weathered face folds into a weary frown. I see my-self through her eyes and try again. I need this woman to help me.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve had a long journey—’

‘Haven’t we all,’ she interrupts, as though I have already taken up too much of her time. ‘You can bring as much as you can carry, or you can stay on the mainland. Them’s the rules, and that’s the only option, I’m afraid.’ Only option. What a ridiculous expression. Only means one, and one option means none. ‘The choice is yours. You’ve got as long as it takes me to get a sausage sandwich from the food truck to make up your mind,’ she says, then walks away.

I have always been rather slow at making quick decisions, but this one seems simple enough. I grab a rucksack filled with Columbo’s food and things, a suitcase filled with mine, and throw my satchel containing my laptop and notepads on my shoulder. I can’t carry anything else, not even the bag of food I packed, but I grab a packet of milk chocolate digestives and shove it in my jacket pocket. That will have to do for now. I lock the car and hurry toward the boat, Columbo trotting at my side just as the ferrywoman returns with her breakfast. She takes a large bite of her sausage sandwich and ketchup oozes out, landing on her chin. She curses, wipes it with a white paper napkin, and the resulting stain looks like blood.

‘Decision made?’ she asks, and I nod. ‘Then welcome aboard,’ she says with a smile, before taking another bite.

The seagulls squawk and scream, flapping their dirty white wings as if protesting, and circling above the ferry as it breaks free from the jetty. Their wingspan is vast, casting swooping shadows across the deck, and when I look up, I see that the tips of their beaks are red, as though dipped in blood too. They descend and dive so that I have to duck out of the way, and the ugly noise they make almost sounds like a warning:

Go back. Go back. Go back.

I’m sure it is just the exhaustion and my imagination playing tricks on me, and I notice the birds do not stalk us for long. They retreat toward the mainland when the ferry pulls away, slowly sailing out of the bay.

The sun has fully risen now, and everything is a dazzling shade of blue. It’s hard to tell where the sea stops and the sky begins. The Hebridean Sea is rough and the other passengers all stay inside their vehicles, but that isn’t an option for us. Columbo and I make our way to the front of the ferry and I sit my things and myself on a metal bench on the exposed deck. It’s cold, and we get showered with an occasional mist of sea spray, but the view of the Isle of Am-berly is utterly mesmerizing. A halo of white sand and a turquoise sea surrounds the tiny island, making it look like a mirage and this feel like a dream. A pod of dolphins leaps from the waves the ferry has created as though they are escorting us on our voyage, and my face stretches into an unfamiliar smile.

Our adventure might have had a tricky beginning, but this is beautiful, and I experience something like hope for the first time in a long time. Perhaps Kitty was right, and this is the fresh start I so desperately need, a second chance to get my life and career back on track. My agent is almost always right. I look around the deck, wondering if anyone else has spotted the dolphins, and that’s when I see her. She’s wearing the same bright red coat she had a year ago, the one she was wearing the night she disappeared, and is standing at the back of the boat, staring right at me. I shiver, not just from the cold, and it feels like time stops for a moment. Columbo barks, breaking the spell. I glance down to see what he is growling at— it turns out he was looking in the same direction as me, at her— but when I turn back, she is gone. It all happened so fast that it feels like I might have imagined it, but the woman I saw was the spitting image of my missing wife.

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney is published by Macmillan, priced £16.99.