So, okay then, I have been reported missing; that is a shame, thinks Sarah. She does not mean to cause such trouble. Still, it’s not time to go back yet. She isn’t done. She walks out through the heavy black iron gate, arms crossed, getting away from the tower, knowing that she needs to be alone for what is coming. The moments and the seconds and the hours are slow for her, slower than ever, as she waits for the test. Then she will know what to do. Tomorrow. In the morning. First thing. Not before that date, the clinic said. When is that, though, to be sure? When the light comes up? After the first coffee? First wee. And where can she go now? Not back into the lighthouse. The strange, handsome, raggedy man who is trying to be kind makes her wary. What kind of person lives in a tower anyway? A knight. A battered one. There is no shining armour here. His clothes are loose and crumpled. His stubble is patchy, his hair explosive. That stone he wears around his neck on a piece of stretched leather obviously means something. Those are the colours of a lady, who is no longer here. There is a tone in his voice, a shadow on his face, some expression in those soulful, startled eyes that says he knows something of how Sarah feels. Somehow. Perhaps. But he cannot really. Nobody can. He means no harm, she believes that. So maybe she will stay. Until dark at least. Then she can walk down the hill unseen, follow the road back to the Gap, get a bus to the path to the farmhouse again. Even as she thinks it, she does not believe it. The wind is strong.
Sarah walks once around the outer wall of the lighthouse plot to the corner where it crumbles, then once the other way, before going back in.
She finds herself alone and starving, looking at a soup can on the table. Tomato. She fishes in the drawers, finds an opener, pours the thick, lipstick-red liquid into a saucepan. The scent rising from the pan makes her feel faint.
‘Is there a reason you’re not talking? There must be.’ He is behind her, in the doorway, hair wet from the shower. ‘That’s funny. It’s my thing. I like the silence here. I don’t talk much, to other people. Or I didn’t. It’s okay, I get it. Just give me something, though, will you?’
‘Good soup,’ she says, very quietly.
‘Right. Yes. Thank you. Have it all. You look famished. How have you been eating?’
She pours the remainder into her bowl and looks up.
‘Right,’ he says, getting the message. ‘No questions.’
‘I was okay. On the cliff edge. I wasn’t going to fall.’
‘No, okay.’
They sit and eat to music. Satie again, quiet and calm. The intimacy of the pair of them in this room disturbs him. She is lovely but young, too young. And anyway. Anyway. His head grows heavy, his eyes close and he rests on the table, the cool wood on his forehead, just for a moment. He doesn’t notice Sarah, leaning back in the armchair, watching him. Waiting. When he starts to snore, she breathes deeply and allows herself to sink back into the same oblivion. So the strangers sleep, side by side in the same room, as the afternoon tires and the shadows deepen.
Gabe wakes with a sore neck and a flat face, to find anger pulsing in his temples and the woman talking to him urgently, saying things he can’t quite hear.
‘Why are you here?’
‘Oh. Ugh. I live here.’
‘Why?’ She’s kneeling up on the armchair, using the back as a shield. Staring. Studying him. ‘What is this place?’
‘A lighthouse. With no light. A darkhouse, Rí said . . .’
‘Who is she?’
No, he’s not talking about that. ‘No questions. Okay?’
Sarah shrugs. They sit in silence again, at the table and in the armchair. She sits lightly, all elbows and knees, as if to spring up at any moment. The music has stopped, the wind has gone. The silence is awkward.
‘I would like to know about this place. Please.’
Why won’t she just go? He doesn’t want her to go. She’s in his head now. No, that’s not happening either. So what now? In the other life before he was called the Keeper, when he was still the special correspondent Gabriel Keane, people told him things and he learned to hear them, even when they said nothing with their mouths. Silence could be eloquent. So, what is Sarah saying? He forces himself to think.
First, she doesn’t want to talk about whatever it is that brought her here, not yet. That’s okay. But the way she stretches her legs out now says she is starting to feel just a little more safe, starting to trust him a bit. Enough to risk pushing back at him with those questions. What else then? She has no bag. She hasn’t been here the whole time; she must have been sleeping somewhere else before last night, and left her bag there, expecting to return. One of the farms, maybe. There are a couple of those within walking distance, two or three miles. It won’t have been too hard to stay out of the way, under a different name, before the police were notified that she was missing and started looking. So she must have come to Belle Tout yesterday, probably on foot, without her bags. After Jack. Maybe she was caught out in the storm and needed shelter. If she rang the bell he did not hear it. The door was probably unlocked, because he’s an idiot who should know better. She came in only as far as she needed to. That first room, by the door. You can’t see into the tower from there. Still, she’s brave. Tough. She looks slight, but moves with such composure. Her face makes you smile . . .
Does it now?
Rí, Jesus. Don’t be mad. I’m yours.
I know.
Help me then. What am I supposed to do?
No answer.
Sarah is clearly not about to talk either. The other thing he was good at, back in the day, when he found himself sitting with someone, hoping for their stories to flow so that he could write them down, was knowing when to spin a tale, to share something of himself and show the way for the other person to follow.
‘Okay,’ he says to her. ‘Okay, Sarah. I’ll talk. Let me do that. They say we need to move it. The whole thing, back from the edge. You can see why: there’s just that lip of land out there before the edge. Bits of the cliff are always falling away. The tower was fifty feet further back when it was built. They say we can build rails under the tower and pull it back. It will cost a fortune.’ This is unfamiliar, talking this much – he has to clear his throat to keep going. ‘I haven’t got a fortune. Nobody has, for something like that. We got the place because of it.’
Sarah says nothing, head on her knees, not looking at him.
‘We’ve got ten years – maybe a bit more if we’re lucky. Maybe less.’
That’s it. That’s the story. She’s supposed to respond. Sarah unfolds herself with quick grace, gets up and moves around, looks at a book or two, just by the window. Her face in shadow, the light on the long sweep of her neck. The silence is deafening.