fell across his face again.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on, out with it. I can tell something’s up.’
He cleared his throat, looking embarrassed.
‘Well, it’s just, you know . . . if you’re a couple, at ViaTerra, the expectation is that you’ll, um, move in together.’
‘Move in together?’
‘I just want to make sure you know the rules before we start anything. It seems like no one explained them to you.’
‘What rules?’
‘You can only have sex if you live together or you’re married.’
‘Who said anything about sex?’
‘Don’t make this even harder for me.’
‘What kind of moron thought up that rule?’
Benjamin laughed.
‘Franz, probably. But don’t you see what it would be like in such a small group, if everyone was sleeping with everyone else all the time?’
She considered it for a moment. This was all so exciting. It was new and unusual and a little titillating, and for some strange reason she liked it.
‘But just because there are rules doesn’t mean you can’t bend them a little sometimes, right?’
He nodded in agreement as if they had just made a pact.
*
It was totally dark when they left the pub. A half-moon shined down on them from the clear sky. They could see their breath, and the chilly air nipped at their cheeks. She flipped up her collar and buried her hands in her jacket pockets. Benjamin put his arm around her shoulders again.
The walk to ViaTerra was long, but it passed quickly. She leaned against him, snuggling into his chest now and then.
Sten was on guard at the gate, and he waved them in distractedly. The wind was still beyond the thick walls.
The windows of the manor house were bright in the darkness. When Sofia looked up, she thought she could see a light on in the attic — then she remembered that the attic was unfit for use. A moment later the light had vanished and she decided she must have been seeing things.
*
They bent the rules just a few weeks later. They never discussed it, but the tension between them had risen until his visits to the library became unbearable.
It was their day off, and he met her by the gate. They didn’t even talk about where to go — their feet just carried them to the cottage and their hands were linked as if frozen by a constant electric current. She moved right up next to him for the last little bit of the journey and noticed that his breathing was already faintly erratic and heavy.
She’d had good and bad sex before, but never forbidden sex, so this was something new. She walked ahead of him into the cottage and right away he grabbed her from behind, lifting her loose hair and kissing her tenderly on the back of the neck. He nibbled at her earlobe and tried to get his hands in under her clothes, but one hand got stuck between the buttons. She pulled him to the kitchen bench and they collapsed onto it, eager but awkward in all their outerwear. They rolled onto the rag rug on the floor. On the way down she accidentally grabbed hold of the lace tablecloth and a candlestick came flying by, narrowly missing Benjamin’s head. They burst into laughter but managed to pull off each other’s clothing: jackets, boots, gloves, pants, and sweaters ended up in one big pile that grew as they gasped and howled in amusement.
This is how it should be the first time, she thought. Wild and joyful. Then she thought about what would happen if someone came into the cottage and discovered them on the floor — but it wouldn’t have mattered, not even if it was Oswald himself. It was like they were a runaway train, and no one could stop them.
Afterwards, as they lay twined together on the rag rug, she decided that forbidden sex blew everything else out of the water.
She rested her head against his shoulder and they lay like that for a long time. Completely devoid of energy, drained.
‘What’s the punishment?’ she asked.
‘The punishment?’
‘Yes, for what we did.’
‘What do you mean, what we did?’
‘Stop messing with me!’
‘Well, it’s pretty bad. I mean, you get shunned from the group. Dismissed. Sent back to the mainland.’
‘No way! Just for having sex without living together?’
‘That’s right. But we don’t have to tell anyone, do we? It’s between us.’
She thought of the library, her dream for the future. How would it feel to tell her family and friends that she couldn’t hack it? That she had been fired?
‘Exactly. It has nothing to do with anyone else.’
I’m sitting on the cliff and staring into the fog.
It seems strange that the fog lingers even though spring is here. Maybe it’s a sign, calling me to leave.
You can hardly see the water, only hear the waves crashing against the rocks. A few ducks fly down and land on the surface, where they turn into little brown balls of feathers. Too bad I left my rifle at home. I toss a rock at them and they flap their wings and fly off.
The wind is picking up and the fog is scattering farther out at sea; I can see the lighthouse out there, a dot floating in the mist. It’s a peculiar sight. Not beautiful — because beauty is a concept I never make use of, an expression used by the weak to show how sensitive they are.
But it’s calm here by the sea, maybe even peaceful.
I haven’t received a response to my letter, but it doesn’t matter. Now he knows.
Everything is ready. I’ve pawned my mother’s jewellery, things she won’t miss until I’m long gone from the island.
The ticket is safely tucked in my trouser pocket. My backpack is under my bed, the diary and other important documents inside. I think about my exodus. How I will disappear. How it will feel when I come back once it’s all done.
One last night with Lily is all I need now, a ceremony and an acknowledgement.
Then I hear a sound. It floats in from the sea and echoes off the rocks. A dull, monotonous bellow from the old lighthouse.
The foghorn.
My first thought is that it can’t be true. That the message is for someone else, an old person in the village or some suicidal idiot roving
