far

Fiction

Gunchapel Edge

Cecy Grace
issue five

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My name’s Lynn. Or Eilean Harris, if we’re being formal. No one calls me that, not even my mum, and especially not since I left. She used to joke that I was born facing the wrong direction, already looking for the door out. I liked that version of myself. It made me feel wild, even when I was just eating Coco Pops on the radiator and pretending I was adopted by a famous poet who wore velvet and never shouted.

Six years ago I left our lovely little town of Gunchapel — up in the highlands of Scotland, near the Orkney islands — with a second-hand suitcase and a Spotify playlist called GET OUT, all caps. I’d dyed my hair orange the night before. Not the cool, burnt orange I was going for, but a kind of tangerine disaster that clashed with my skin. Still, it felt like something, you know? Like change.

Six years later, I’m back. To shed the name Lynn, to reclaim Eilean. 

I stepped off the bus at the layby just past the petrol station. The same one we used to loiter around, not really smoking but holding the cigarette like it meant something. I recognised the smell immediately—diesel, salt air, the faintest whiff of fried onions from the van that somehow still sold chips shaped like smiley faces.

And I stood there. For longer than I should have. The driver didn’t ask if I was alright and I liked that. He just closed the doors and pulled away, leaving me alone with my ridiculous neon green suitcase and the wind flattening my jumper to my ribs.

You always think you’ll come back a different person, that the place you left will blink and stutter and not quite recognise you. But it’s the opposite. You’re the one who gets lost. Because Gunchapel—Gunchapel never forgets.

The sea was on my left, in that same restless way it’s always been—never calm, always muttering to itself like it’s arguing with the rocks. And ahead of me: the low-slung row of pebble-dashed houses, the Spar with the same girl working weekends since I was fourteen, the bus stop with the faded poster advertising a ceilidh from 2019. It felt like walking back into a memory I’d already edited.

I dragged my suitcase up the hill, avoiding the shortcut behind the primary school. Too many ghosts down that path. Instead, I went the long way round, past the new housing estate they tried to build before the funding ran out. It’s just foundations now. Skeletons of houses. Perfect metaphor, really.

My mum’s cottage looked the same. Red door, chipped. A broken hanging basket from last summer. And the curtain in the living room twitched—meaning she saw me before I knocked. I stared at the door for a few seconds. Then knocked anyway.

Mum opened it like she was bracing for weather.

“Christ, you look tired.”

I could’ve cried at the normality of it. Not hi, sweetheart or thank God you’re home—just a judgment wrapped in concern. That was her love language. That and hot Ribena.

“You look exactly the same,” I said, and she gave me the sort of smile that almost reached her eyes.

Inside, the house smelled of damp books and sandalwood incense. Some things never die.

We both waited till we were seated, tea in hand, silence sitting beside us like a third guest. “So,” Mum said. 

“So,” I echoed.

And there was everything, laid bare: the night I left, eighteen years old; the six years I was gone, the reasons I left, the nights she left the porch light on just in case, the calls I didn’t return. The rehab. The flat I lost. The boy I loved who stopped writing. The cities that swallowed me whole, then spat me back out.

It was all in there.

Outside, the wind rose. A gull screamed overhead. I watched the sea through the lace curtain and wondered how long I’d last this time before trying to run again.

***

The first night back was always the hardest.

I lay in my old bedroom, blinking at the ceiling like it owed me answers. It still had the glow-in-the-dark stars I stuck up when I was thirteen. Most had peeled off or stopped glowing, but a few clung on—pale little ghosts, quietly defying time.

Mum hadn’t changed much in here. Same mismatched bedding, same bookshelf crammed with old paperbacks and science homework I never handed in. I found a photo tucked in one of the pages—a blurred shot of me at sixteen, hair wild, one hand holding a cigarette like I knew what I was doing, the other making a peace sign like I didn’t care. God. That version of me was always performing. For whom, I’m not sure.

I couldn’t sleep. The silence out here isn’t city silence—it’s sharp, pointed, almost violent. Every creak of the pipes, every rustle outside, feels personal. I missed sirens. And the hum of strangers in the next flat over. City noise makes you feel like you’re never alone. Here, it’s just you and whatever’s still rattling around inside your head.

At around 3:30 a.m., I gave up and crept downstairs, careful not to wake Mum. The kettle still screeched like a banshee. I made tea just to hold something warm, not because I wanted it.

Outside, the sea was ink-black, except for the moon drawing silver lines on it like a shaky signature. The cliffs in the distance looked like sleeping giants. I used to pretend they were. That they’d wake up one day and stomp down into the village, shaking everything loose.

The truth is, I came back because I had nowhere else to go.

I told people I met there it was for “a break,” like I was on some spiritual retreat. But really, I ran out of rent money and borrowed favours. The last friend I stayed with gave me a look that said, You’re not just crashing anymore—you’re sinking. And I was. Even I could feel it. Even now, I was nothing more than the prodigal daughter returning home, tail between her legs.

There’s a heaviness in getting better that no one talks about. Everyone wants the after photo. The glossy, smiling, “look how far I’ve come” bit. No one tells you how boring it is. How lonely. How many times you have to say no when all you want is to disappear again. Not forever. Just long enough.

By morning, Mum found me still at the kitchen table, tea gone cold.

“You’ll rot sitting there,” she said, already dressed for work. Navy jumper, sensible boots, ponytail clipped back like a schoolteacher who gives firm detentions but soft smiles.

“I slept a bit,” I lied.

“You didn’t. I heard the kettle at stupid o’clock.”

She poured herself coffee. No sugar. Never sugar.

“Thinking of going down to the shore,” I said, not really sure if I meant it.

“Good. Walk’ll do you good. Get the city out your lungs.”

As if it was that easy. Like I could just wring the smoke and regret from my ribs and leave it in the seaweed.

But I nodded.

***

The tide was out by the time I reached the beach. The rocks were slick and shining, the sand pockmarked with bird prints. I took off my boots and socks, rolled up my jeans, and stepped into the water. It was colder than I remembered. Bit back.

There was a girl sitting on the old concrete breakwater. Blonde braid, Doc Martens, knees tucked to her chest. She glanced over once, then looked away. I recognised her—not by name, but by type. Small-town girl who stayed, probably works at the pharmacy or the bakery, maybe goes to Edinburgh once a year to feel anonymous. There’s a kind of strength in staying. I never saw it until I left. 

I wanted to ask her if she ever felt stuck. Or if she loved this place so much it hurt to leave. But you can’t ask that sort of thing out loud. Instead, I stared out to sea and let the cold climb up my ankles. I wanted to feel something. Anything.

The wind lifted, and I closed my eyes. In the distance, a bird cried out—maybe a gull, maybe something else. The sky was beginning to smear with light, that odd grey-pink haze that means morning is trying to happen. I stayed there, just breathing.

I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t even okay.

But for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t running.