could walk along the road instead, she thought. Like a normal person, not like a thief or a dog afraid of being beaten. The road was lit, and she knew it was dangerous. Yet she straightened up and soon the asphalt of the road was beneath her feet. For a moment she felt like a human being again. Someone who walks without fear.
As if such women walk barefoot through town in the middle of the night, she thought. And just then she caught sight of something lying on a slab of concrete, a resting place by the road.
I’m hallucinating, she thought, I can no longer trust my eyes. She went closer and found that her eyes hadn’t deceived her. A pair of shoes. She reached out her hand, but hesitated and looked all around. Was it a trap? Was somebody trying to trick her? But who would think up such an odd idea?
It was nothing short of a miracle. A gift from God. She hesitantly touched the shoes lying there. They were real. And they were made of gold.
All right, she thought and picked them up. They were quite ordinary cloth shoes that had been dyed gold, but still. They almost fit. Just a little tight in the toes. She didn’t intend to complain. Some divine power had placed these shoes in her path. Wearing these shoes she wouldn’t have to step in dog shit.
For the first time since she had come ashore she turned around and gazed back. On the horizon, across the straits, Africa loomed like a gigantic shadow. How close it was. She could see the mountains and the scattered lights in the dark.
Then she walked on, and did not turn back again.
Please let this be a nightmare, thought Terese Wallner when she awoke, lying on the beach. Let me wake up again, but for real this time, and in my own bed.
Slowly she sat up, a terrible pounding inside her skull. The sea was in motion, darkly surging towards her. A flock of slumbering gulls stood in a pool left by the receding tide. Otherwise the shore was deserted.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again, trying to comprehend what had happened. There was nothing around her, that much was true. He was gone.
Her white capri trousers were filthy, and the sequinned camisole and cardigan offered no protection from the cold. The wind cut right through them. Her mouth was as dry as a desert and filled with sand. She spat, cleared her throat, and tried to rub away the sand with her fingers, but it had settled under her tongue and seeped way down her throat. She would need a giant bottle of water, at the very least, to rinse it all away. But where was her purse?
Terese dug her hands into the sand around her. It was hard to see in the dim light. A dark-greyish dusk intermittently pierced by flashes that hurt her eyes, coming from the lighthouse beam. She knew it was out there on an island. Isla de las Palomas, island of the doves. Off limits to tourists. A military area. Reached by a causeway, but with signs posted at the gates. The waves slammed against the rocks out there, spraying high into the air.
Then she caught sight of her purse, and her heart leaped. It was lying half-buried in the sand, less than a metre from the dent where her head had lain. She grabbed it. Everything was still inside: her wallet and hotel room key, her mobile and make-up bag, even her good-luck charm, which was a tiny frog on a keychain. And the bottle of water, thank God. She always carried water with her when she went out, since the tap water tasted so terrible in Spain. There was still a little left in the bottle. First she rinsed her mouth and spat out the water. Then she drank the rest of it, wishing there was much more. She picked up her wallet and opened it, her heart racing. The banknotes were gone. She’d had almost a hundred euros when she’d gone out for the evening. She couldn’t possibly have spent that much on drinks. What about her passport? She rummaged through her bag, but it wasn’t there. Terese was positive she’d brought her passport, as she always did, even though everyone said it wasn’t necessary.
Her shoes were also gone. She stared at her feet. They were suntanned, but white around the edges, with sand clinging between her toes. She looked all around, but the ballet flats she’d worn were nowhere to be seen. When had she taken them off? Before or after? She rubbed the palms of her hands against her forehead to stop the uproar inside.
I need to think clearly. I need to remember.
Had she been barefoot as she ran across the sand with him holding her hand, urging her down towards the sea, both of them laughing loudly into the wind, wondering if their laughter would be blown away?
She pictured his tousled, sun-bleached hair, his eyes gleaming as he looked at her. His arms were hard and sinewy, muscles taut from working out. His shirt fluttered open so she could see his brown abdomen, not a scrap of fat anywhere. She couldn’t believe she was the one he’d taken by the hand as they closed up the Blue Heaven Bar. He’d whispered in her ear that they should move on to someplace else. ‘You can’t go home yet,’ he’d said. ‘Not when I’ve just found you.’
Terese ran her hand lightly over the sand next to her. It was cold. Was there a slight indentation, an impression that his body had left behind, a trace of warmth? But that might simply be her imagination, because the wind blew more steadily in Tarifa than anywhere else on earth, wiping away all tracks in an instant.
No one needs to know what happened, she thought. Nothing did happen. Not if I don’t tell anyone.
She drew her cardigan tighter around her. Sand chafed inside her knickers. She felt sticky down there.
‘But what if someone’s here?’ she’d said as he urged her towards the sea. ‘What if someone’s here, watching us?’
‘You’re thinking about the wrong things,’ he said, kissing her, pressing his tongue deep inside her mouth. And his hands were everywhere, under her camisole and inside her knickers all at once. Then he unbuttoned her tight capris and slid them down and they tumbled onto the sand together. And she thought she might fall in love with him. She thought he was the most gorgeous guy she’d ever been with.
If only her friends could see her now!
You can’t go to Tarifa without having sex on the beach, he’d told her. It would be like not seeing the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Then she’d felt the sand against her skin as he pressed her down. Grains of sand rose up between her buttocks and pushed between her legs as he guided his cock with his hand, not finding his way at once, rooting around. All she felt was a scraping as he seemed to pump her full of sand.
She shouldn’t have fallen asleep afterwards. It had happened so fast.
From up in the mountains came the endless rumbling of the wind turbines, turning counter-clockwise. She had thought they looked like electric eggbeaters, whipping the air into cream. He laughed when she said that. Terese bit down on her fingertips to keep herself from crying.
He must have thought I was no good. Worthless. Otherwise he would have stayed and made love to me again and again.
Nausea rose up into her throat. She might have had two or three Cosmopolitans, and then a few Mojitos after that.
The whole beach swayed as she stood up. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees and stayed like that until things stopped moving, swallowing over and over to keep herself from throwing up and having to smell everything that spewed out of her. She couldn’t bear to be so disgusting. That was why she staggered down to the water. It wasn’t far, maybe twenty metres.
She moved slowly, setting her feet down carefully, so as not to step on anything unpleasant. The sand felt cold under her feet, and she was surprised when the first wave reached
