“I'm sorry. That must be very hard for you.”
“Some days are better than others. Mostly it's...” Emma had reached her usual limit of sharing feelings with strangers the moment she said “hello.” But she couldn't stop herself. The sweet, small voice kept chipping away at her. “It feels like it's happening to me, which is obviously not fair. It feels...”
“Like you're the one disappearing?”
Emma stopped dead. Zoe turned and listened patiently.
“Yes. That's exactly what it feels like.”
The two continued up the hill one step at a time.
“Emma, can I ask you a personal question?”
“The accent?”
“Right.”
“I'm American. Not sure if there's more to tell than that.”
“I didn't think the Met hired foreign police officers.”
Emma didn't respond.
“Oh well, I guess they do. You would know after all. Had you ever heard of South Alderney before? I mean before you came here?”
“I can't say that I remember ever hearing about it before this assignment.”
“That's odd, don't you think? I think that's odd. Did you hear about His Excellency? More work for you, I’d imagine. I want to do anything I can to help you. Any way I can help you find the truth, let me know.”
Emma sighed and Zoe let out her own puff of air.
“Look, Zoe, I know you're eager to get up to speed since you've been away, but do you think maybe we could walk and not talk?” Emma scowled at the middle distance and wrapped her coat tightly around herself.
Zoe smiled. “Been away? I never left.”
Her smile faded as Emma stared at her in confusion. The hard-won respite lasted almost to the top of the hill, when Emma broke her own silence.
“What's that smell?”
“What smell?”
“You don't smell that? It's like... something died and then went for a swim.”
They turned the last corner around a boulder of volcanic rock and found David standing in the doorway of the station.
“What are you doing here?”
“You thought you could get away without eating anything? It's nearly lunch time.” He lifted a stained paper bag from the chippy.
“Mystery solved.”
“Sorry about the smell. I tried to convince Gregory to sell me a sheep, but he's suspiciously fond of the thing. Miss Hall.”
Zoe nodded. “You’re the husband.”
“Guilty, I’m afraid. You’re English?”
“I guess so.”
“Whereabouts in England?”
“East London. Barking and Dagenham.”
“Nice area. Hardly Essex at all. You don't find it too stifling around here?”
David's face gave nothing away, and Zoe's tone was equally factual.
“It's not so bad, once you get used to the damp.” She looked at Emma as she continued. “Evan and I used to pass the time thinking up emergency prank calls to container ships from South Africa. Not that we ever did it. Now I guess it's going to be lonelier up on the hill.”
Emma couldn't resist the bait.
“You ought to be pretty good at being alone in your line of work. You two must have come up with better ways of handling isolation than imaginary distress calls over the radio.”
“We'll all find out together how we cope with it, won't we? I'm going to check the weather data from Amsterdam Island against our own, if you want to join me. It's work the Governor General would normally do, if we had one.”
“I think I might steal my wife for a little bit, if you don't mind.” David lifted the paper bag, causing a slight squishing sound.
Emma knew she was beaten. She had berated him for not taking care of his own needs so many times that she had no choice, lest she risk being a hypocrite. And being a hypocrite makes it very difficult to convincingly maintain the moral high ground.
“Not here.”
“Certainly not. I found a nice spot.”
Zoe didn't look away from Emma. “If that's what you want.” She walked past David into the building.
The small cemetery next to the church felt almost normal. In lieu of a public park, wooden benches under stunted, invasive oak trees gave some escape from the reality of the island. And the fresh air carried the smell downwind. David leaned back on a bench and looked up through the branches.
“They have a superstition here about dogs.”
“I thought they didn’t have any dogs.”
“Right. But the story goes that there are dogs on the island. They keep out of sight, stay quiet, ever since the government tried to wipe them out to protect the birds. As if the dogs were to blame for being hungry. The survivors are the ones who know to stay away from the village and keep quiet at night.”
“That’s just a story.”
“Probably. But the weird thing is that it feels more plausible here for some reason. I don’t know how to explain it, but part of me feels like there is a different set of rules at work here.”
“That’s not how rules work. Are you about to tell me you think the Devil stalks the island at night, stealing naughty children who don’t eat their vegetables?”
“All I’m saying is that it’s easy to take the things these people believe seriously. Assuming you can ever figure out what it is they believe in the first place.”
David handed her a bag of soggy chips and she took a handful without looking. She held them up to her mouth as if she had already forgotten about them. “I believe they’re ready to find an excuse. Everyone is. People find monsters more comforting than people who act like monsters.”
“Who are they, then? Have you sorted them into the proper bins yet?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Bollocks. You don’t know people’s nature any better than they do. Your turn to try the halibut.”
Emma stared at the stone markers. Some of them were worn smooth. Others had fallen over. “I don’t want to sit here anymore, can we go for a walk?”
They took the long way to the harbor, down an alley that zig-zagged between back gardens and sheds in various stages of ruin. Emma didn’t
