“I work up at the Lighthouse.”
“You’re a lighthouse keeper?”
He throws back his head and howls with laughter. “I work in the coffee shop. Keeping myself busy. Weans are at uni, you see. I’m what’s known as an empty nester.”
“I’m trying for a baby,” I tell him. It’s a sudden, knee-jerk response to the mention of children. Another admission. Another lightened load.
“Oh, aye,” he replies. “It can be, it can be. How long have you been trying for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I purse my lips. “Technically, one day.”
The man doesn’t laugh, as I expect him to, but nods slowly. “Well, good luck, hen. I hope it works out for you.”
I feel stupid now. The whisky is like truth serum. “I’d better get back,” I say, forcing out a yawn.
“You’re not staying at the hotel?”
“No, it’s just a short walk away.” I notice that I’m being protective about where exactly I’m headed. I think I trust this man. But I don’t trust men.
“Right you are.” He winks. “Mind out for wild beasties on your way home.”
I button my parka all the way to my chin. There are no street lamps outside, and I don’t have a flashlight, so I take out my phone and shine its pathetic greenish light ahead of me.
Ten minutes later, I hear a scream. It’s coming from one of the fields. It’s a woman.
I stop, rigid, listening.
There it is again. The first time I heard it, I thought it was a scream of pain. This time it sounds different. It’s a war cry.
•
I can barely breathe when Lizzie answers the door.
“I’m an idiot,” I say, panting. “Can you help me?”
“Och, you look freezing,” Lizzie says. “Do you want to come in?”
I put my hand to my mouth. “I just left a woman for dead.” Lizzie takes her coat from a hook by the door. “A woman? Where?”
“Up towards the hotel. I heard a scream. Two screams. Coming from the fields.”
Lizzie pauses, arm midway through her coat sleeve. “Did it sound like this?” She imitates the scream.
“You heard it too?”
Lizzie laughs. “That’ll be a wildcat, dearie. It’s mating season.”
“Oh,” I say. “I was right about being an idiot.”
Lizzie squeezes my shoulder. “You’re not the first to make that mistake. Now listen, did you have a good time earlier? Up Ben Hiant?”
I’m still panting. I hope my breath doesn’t stink of whisky. “Yes. Thanks for the crampons.” I put my palms together in a prayer position. “I think I’m going to head home in the morning.”
“Nae bother,” Lizzie says, unaware of the momentousness of the decision I’ve just made.
As she advises me about checkout, I hear her daughters squawking like parrots in the kitchen. Before I turn to leave, I consider, for a split second, whether it would be appropriate to ask Lizzie to meet them. Obviously, the answer is no. Not my family. Not appropriate.
Back at the hut, I get the fire going and pace up and down. Two steps in one direction, two in the other. This tiny space doesn’t feel as reassuring as it did before.
I light all the candles in the hut, switch on the electric light by the bed, and send James a text. Back tomorrow, I tell him. Dive cut short.
Now, I set about cooking up every item of food I have left in the hut. My blood is pumping, my slate is clear, my appetite is back.
That four burners theory is a load of rubbish.
I’m going to switch on all my burners, all at once, and see what happens.
13
Entrant: Solvig Dean
Title: Why I Want to Be One of the First People to Live on Mars
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to do something so momentous that it alters the course of humankind forever.
Does that sound narcissistic? Maybe it is. I’m just not satisfied with small achievements. A job promotion here, a marathon there. Nice as those things are, they don’t help propel humanity into a new era.
When I was five, I watched a programme about the Apollo 11 space mission. I learnt about how Armstrong and Aldrin almost crashed into the moon, only surviving by the skin of their teeth. I remember my dad saying something like: “Ruddy hell, kid, who’d put themselves through something like that?” And I remember looking up at him, smiling sweetly, and saying: “Me, Daddy. I would.” My dad probably laughed, ruffled my hair, and asked if I wanted a chocolate Nesquik.
Now that I’m older, I’m wiser. I know what happened on the first Apollo mission. When Grissom and the others couldn’t evacuate the spacecraft during a fire, and they burned to death before they’d even set off.
And I know what happened to the cosmonauts in Soyuz 11 as they were returning from the Soviet space station. How they looked after their spacecraft landed, strapped to their seats, blood oozing from their ears.
And I know what happened to Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who beat ten thousand applicants in a competition to be the first private citizen to be sent to space. I’ve seen footage of the kids on the ground, eagerly counting her down to liftoff, and I’ve seen the horror on their faces two minutes later.
I know what Ronald Reagan said when he addressed the nation afterwards too. “It’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.” His white handkerchief was poking out of his jacket pocket as he looked straight into the camera. “It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery,” he said, unwavering. “It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted.”
When I think about those words, they make me want to shout out affirmations to the universe.
I want to expand man’s horizons!
I want to take a chance!
Pain is part of the process!
PART TWO
14
“The thing I love most about Caribbean food,” says James, “is that it’s such an interesting fusion of cuisines.” He washes down his
