The Outrun by Amy Liptrot Read Free Book Online Page B

first plane.
    Udal Law, the Norse system that still applies in some cases in Orkney and Shetland, has different rules about the ownership of the coastline from the rest of Britain. In other places, ownership of land extends only to the high-water mark but in Orkney it extends further out to the tide’s lowest spring ebb. Other interpretations of the Udal limit of land rights include: as far as a stone can be thrown, a horse can be waded or a salmon net thrown. Under this law, if something comes ashore on someone’s foreshore, it becomes their property.
    The next day, the farmers knew they had to take their chance and climbed down the rocks the same way the fishermen had come up. I watched Dad go first, long-legged, clambering aboard the boat, then helping others up. We held our breath, hoping their weight would not tip the vessel, before watching them disappear inside the cabin. They emerged a few minutes later and, although they were too far away to see properly, I could tell that they were beaming, arms full of computer equipment.
    Over the next few days, with the farm work continuing, one of our byres became a showroom of electronic navigation and fishing equipment, and fishermen from all over Orkney cameto look and buy. The farmers made a deal to give the insurance company five hundred pounds so that they could sell everything from the boat, including the catch; the profit came to many times that.
    A few days later the wind got up and the boat was toppled from its perch. Overnight, the force of the sea against the rocks smashed it, leaving only small pieces floating on the waves and washed up in geos.
    Almost twenty years later, like the boat, I was in a precarious position. The division between my appearance-maintaining daytime reality and the secrets of my nights was slipping. The cracks were showing. The worry about keeping my cover left my back aching and my hands fidgeting, rolling cigarettes. I was in a dangerous loop, now consciously drinking to ease the shame of what I’d done while drinking the night before.
    The things I did in shared flats were usually not so much bad or dramatic as stupid and annoying: making a mess when trying to cook drunk late at night; eating flatmates’ food as I never had enough of my own; their alcohol drunk and replaced, drunk and replaced; asking to borrow ten or twenty pounds to see me over until payday, then going to the off-licence, slipping back into my room with the door closed and the window open.
    I would put a token number of bottles and cans in the recycling, then tie up the rest in carrier bags and push them into dustbins on the street. I left the house chinking and smelling of stale booze.There were empty bottles in the bottom of my wardrobe and empty cans lined up along my bedroom skirting board.
    My behaviour brought tension into the household: unpredictable noise levels; Tuesday-night parties with strangers, men I brought home; leaving my handbag outside the front door and possessions trailing up the stairs. These episodes were followed by the depressive shadow of my hung-over days in bed.
    I was always getting into horrible states but what other people perhaps didn’t realise was that I didn’t want to get into horrible states. I remember and respect the people who had the courage to try to talk to me about my drinking. I would nod and cry but after the break-up I was self-pitying and self-justifying. ‘You’re quite right to be worried about me,’ I’d say. ‘I’m in pain.’ He’d left me because of my drinking so now I was free to drink.
    It wasn’t the break-up that tipped my drinking out of control, although I used it as an excuse. While I was still living with my boyfriend, I went to a friend’s birthday party in a bar in central London. I left after an hour or so and a couple of drinks, saying I was tired or ill or going home to write when in fact I was going home to drink alone at a faster pace than the drinks were coming there. That evening I