Don't Be Afraid by Daniela Sacerdoti

aunt, her dad’s sister. I was in boarding school, then at university, but I always tried to catch her when I was around. I had a crush on her even when we were children. But Bell began going out with my brother, and then I found out it was serious. They were engaged. I came home less and less. Maybe I didn’t want to see them together, I don’t know.
    But one Christmas, something happened. We happened, Bell and I.
    I was home from university for the Christmas holidays. My father was bedridden, so I spent most of the first few days in his room. I played for him, and I could see he was proud of me.
    Torcuil took advantage of my presence to spend more time with Bell, out for windy walks around the loch or at the Green Hat, away from our family’s heavy presence.
    Every once in a while, this girl I was seeing rang me; I did my best not to answer the phone. The signal was bad; I was busy; I was with my parents. It just wasn’t working out. I said to myself that I was too young for a serious relationship, that all I wanted was to play my music.
    I believed it.
    One night, I was playing for some friends and family, and she was there. Her cheeks were burning, and what I remember the most were her eyes, green like spring leaves: she couldn’t stop looking at me, and I couldn’t stop looking at her.
    I knew. I knew I would not be able to resist. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try with all I had.
    I looked away. I went for a walk through frozen fields and sat at the edge of the loch, in silence.
    Bell. Bell. I called her Bell in my heart, though she was “Isabel” when I said it aloud.
    To Torcuil, she was Izzy.
    Oh, show me the way to go home.
    Bell, show me the way to go home.
    And then she was there, beside me. When our eyes locked, we both knew it was too late to stop, it was impossible to turn back.
    We tried, both of us, and we couldn’t help it, but we fell into each other.
    Hope thwarted will make you sick. Love unfulfilled will make you sick. Not to be with each other, not to touch each other, was poison for us. We could not survive apart. We could not live in a world of things that might have been.
    But for Torcuil’s sake, we had to try.
    Everybody realised, of course. What was happening between Bell and I was plain to see. We were both ashamed; I left Glen Avich at the end of the holidays, early in the morning, with a rushed goodbye to my parents. I did not say goodbye to Bell; I did not say goodbye to Torcuil.
    I wanted to leave them both behind, as far as I could go. Bell, because I loved her; Torcuil, because I had hurt him. I had broken my brother’s trust.
    Bell turned up at my flat in Glasgow three days later, in tears. She’d dissolved the engagement to Torcuil. She said she couldn’t lie.
    â€œYou wouldn’t be lying. You love him,” I said.
    â€œIt’s not him I love.”
    The weight of her words fell on me like something terrible, like something beautiful. Like salvation.
    Eight months later, we got married.
    When we were both twenty-two, we moved back to Glen Avich – Bell would work as a freelance illustrator; I would continue my nomadic musician’s life. I would practise my violin while she drew, and I thought our happiness would never end.
    And then, all of a sudden, she became ill.
    It was sudden, yes, but it got worse slowly.
    I wished I could tell everyone how she used to be – a little spark of joy and life, with an Irish accent and a deep, deep passion for art.
    Her smile was a field of daisies.
    So that was Bell. Fearless, joyful and ready to embrace life.
    Not the shell she’d become.
    I knew all about her childhood of course, how she didn’t speak to her father now and only seldom to her sister – they’d been a surly, silent presence at our wedding – but I didn’t think that one day all she’d been through would catch up with her in such a terrible way.
    It’s difficult to