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She refused to sit, even though he found her an empty seat. She stood in the open doorway, looking out at the lashing waves as they battered the back of the boat. Cases and packages had been thrown off the seats onto the floor, sticky and wet from the spray that washed in. Most of the other passengers had been shopping. It was the last ferry service from Guernsey before Christmas. She was shunted from side to side as the boat swayed, and her hand fluttered to her aching belly.
Three times she’d made this journey, and each time she’d left something behind. It was hard to recall the joy she’d felt on that first sailing to Sark. Summer. Only six months ago. How happy she’d been to say goodbye to her childhood. Ironic, then, that her second journey had been made at the behest of her father, the very man whose tether she had tried so desperately to escape. She’d thought he might kill her when he’d found out. But when he’d calmed down, he’d made her pray with him. Said she would go back and marry him, whoever he was, and if she needed persuading, she could come with him to the centre and talk to some of the girls there. And then he’d packed her bag and thrown her out. If she hadn’t felt so sick, so alone, she would have laughed at his hypocrisy.
She’d had no choice but to go to Reg.
She’d stood in the same place on that journey, looking at Guernsey disappear into the distance, that small island, with its roads and cars, looking like a beacon of hope and opportunity compared to where she was headed.
Now this crossing. A whole week in the Princess Elizabeth Hospital. She’d lost the baby. She should feel relieved, but she felt hollow. She wanted it back with a ferocity she’d never before experienced.
He had Len pick them up in the tractor. She sat in the cab, he in the trailer. She was relieved at the break from the unbearable intensity of his stare. Len helped her out at the house. She wondered how much he knew, if men talked about things like women did—or like she assumed women did. She had not spoken to Meg since she’d left home, and had exchanged no more than a few words with the island women.
He held the door open for her and followed her into the bedroom. He had replaced the sheets—no amount of scrubbing would have got the stains out of the old ones. She sat on the edge of the bed, ran her hands over the fabric. The bright swirls of the pattern looked out of place in this small, sombre room.
‘Can I get you anything?’
She shook her head.
‘Tea?’
‘There’s no reason for me to be here now. I’ll leave. Soon as I feel better.’
He looked confused. ‘Said I’d marry you. Still will.’
‘Why? Why would you do that? There’s no baby.’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘Stay. Please.’
She lay on the bed. Turned her back to him.
He was sleeping. Snoring in the armchair. A tumbler at his feet, bottle of whisky half drunk. She picked up the glass. Drained it of the last drop. It burned her throat. A log glowed in the fireplace, a slash of bright gold shining in the centre of the charred wood. She prodded at it with the poker, watched the shower of sparks float to the floor and shrivel to grey. He stirred. It was cold and she thought about covering him with a blanket. That would be a wifely thing to do. Instead, she took her coat from the peg next to the door and walked out into the night.
The road was empty. The gritty earth crunched beneath her feet. The only light came from a sliver of moon and the stars. There were so many stars in the sky; they swirled across the blackness, like spilt milk. She told herself she walked without purpose, without destination, but her feet said otherwise, taking her in a particular direction: left at the crossroads, right at the gate, towards La Moinerie, where he’d told her a monastery once stood.
The path here became uneven, rutted by tractors, broken by the twisted roots of the beech trees lining the way. They thickened as she walked. This was a wood, she supposed. Or the closest thing to one on this island of meadows and hedges, of bracken and gorse. It was rocky underfoot. It was rocky everywhere—the paths, the cliffs, the houses, the walls—all hard and grey and unforgiving.
It was darker under the branches. Hard to see the way down rough steps carved out of the earth and stone. She stumbled. Sat. Felt her way forwards with her hands, her frozen fingertips grazing against sharp edges, feeling damp hollows. She pulled herself down, blind save for the glint of moonlight through the branches, down into the valley, the earth tipping towards the sea, until she emerged from the shelter of the trees, onto open land, exposed to a biting wind, which struck her face with icy fingers. The path tapered, and at its point, more rock, a wall of it, blocked the way.
Except for the window.
It was one of the first places Reg had shown her. Someone had blasted through, many years ago—a mad seigneur’s folly. He’d had people blow a hole with dynamite to frame a perfect view—an azure sea, passing ships, Guernsey in the distance. From here, in the dark, it looked like a way out. There was light at the end of the tunnel, a strange luminescence, the glow of moonlight on water.
She walked through. The gale battered her body. A few feet in front of her was a sheer drop. She stepped forward, held herself stiff against the gale. Looked down at the white horses turned silver, the blue water black.
This whole thing was madness. Island madness. That’s what he’d called it, that first night. After the drinks. After the walk and the hot, uncomfortable mess that followed, and then dinner and more of the same, because after the first time, she’d thought, Why not? Why not see him again, spend a week pretending that her life was her own, to do as she pleased, that she was happy, having fun, in control? She shook herself. What a fool she had been. Everything about her life had been decided by other people. As a child, she’d had no choice. She had listened to Mother, and Mother had listened to Father, and hellfire and damnation would surely have followed if they hadn’t. She’d wandered into adulthood in something like dream, she realised. Or more like an enchantment, one that made her powerless, bound to follow the orders of others. She felt like she’d woken up a week ago. Her screams had broken the spell.
She took a step forward. Disturbed the unstable ground at the edge of the cliff. Heard a pebble clatter, crack-cracking as it bounced off the rock face to the sea. She lifted a foot. Waved it in the nothingness. Was blown back, towards the window. She wondered if it might hold her and she spread her arms, eyes streaming, vision blurred, so at first she thought she imagined it.
Flashing lights. A little way out. She stepped back, pulled her coat tightly around herself, rubbed her eyes, squinted. Surely nobody in their right mind would be sailing or fishing in this weather.
On, off, on, off.
There was a pattern to it. Some kind of signal. As she focused on the light, sharp and bright, the scale of her surroundings seemed to magnify—the height of the cliffs, the depth of the ocean, the breadth of the sky above, the ferocity of the cold and the wind—and she wanted nothing more than to be back at the cottage, to wrap herself in a blanket, to lie in front of the warm embers of the dying fire.
She was not alone.
A shape, on the other side, a black figure, edges defined only by the moonlight. It was him, she thought, come to bring her home, but as she took another step towards the tunnel, she faltered. The shape was all wrong. Too short, too stout. She pressed her back against the rock face. Heard shuffling. A cough. The smell of cigarette smoke.
‘Someone’s going to get killed, out in this.’
‘Can you see it or what? I’m fucking freezing.’
Two of them. Their voices echoed in the tunnel. Her coat flapped about her legs. She tried not to move, not to breathe.
‘I see it.’
‘It’s done?’
‘Wait a minute. Gotta count them.’
Out to sea, the light flashed. On, off, on, off.
‘It’s done. Fuck me, in this weather. Not messing about, are they?’
Another cough. Voices faded.
She waited. Five minutes. Ten. She was so cold, so stiff, she dropped to her hands and knees for fear she would fall and bounce like a rock, crack-crack, into the sea below. She crawled through the tunnel, over the grass, into the woods, stumbled up the path and then ran to the cottage, stopping only when she reached it. She tried to quiet her breathing. Pushed gently so the door would not murmur. Shook uncontrollably, felt like the cold had frozen her bones. He was still in the chair. Still snoring. The fire had burned to ash. She unbuttoned her coat. Her ears were ringing; her hands were numb and bleeding, her trousers filthy and ripped. She couldn’t stay here, in this tiny house on this tiny island. There was something dark about this place, something wrong and sinister.
She had to get away before it consumed her.