Outside the infirmary it is cold, with darkness dropping like a stone, the sky sudden grey granite, fading to black. I search for the first star, but the bite of the wind makes me close my eyes. I have forgotten my coat but it is too late to go back. My ankle throbs where it caught on the bed and, as I walk, the memory of Dot’s words beats out the timing of my steps: I’m tired of you hanging off me.
The first star glimmers. I shiver and try to make a wish. But what could I ask? For my sister to see sense? For the Italian men to be swept somehow from the island, or struck down with disease? Or perhaps I could wish for something else. Perhaps I could beg for my own memories to be different.
I run my fingers over the hollow at my throat and count my steps until I can breathe easily, until I can no longer feel the sensation of his hands there.
I feel them in my sleep, his hands. Squeezing.
Sand. Darkness. His breath hot in my ear.
I whirl around. There’s no one behind me. He’s not here. I’m safe.
Then I stop. The silhouettes of the prisoners’ huts loom around me in the darkness and, with the stomach-lurching sense of having missed a step, I realize that I am lost.
Lost in a camp of hundreds of men.
With their muscled arms, their strong hands.
The thought is ridiculous – how can I be lost? But the flimsy huts are a maze. Every one of them identical. Like the faces of the men. I imagine them sitting in those huts. Their hot breath, their broad chests. I imagine the sound of their laughter.
My own breath is tight in my throat, my legs suddenly weak, my vision narrowing. I used to think that the idea of tunnel vision was just that – an idea, a myth. But I remember the way my sight had reduced to a single point, a single face. And the thought I’d had: that this would be the last face I would see.
I stop. I lean against the steel wall of one of the huts, drawing air into my lungs, exhaling slowly, watching the clouds of my breath rising towards the star-scattered sky, then disappearing for ever.
I make myself walk onwards, but I have a constant churning dread in my belly, as though the next step might be empty air. If I can just get to the bothy, I’ll be safe and Dot will come to find me. Then I’ll be able to explain the danger she’s putting herself in. Or perhaps I should walk to Skara Brae – the sunken houses on the coast that are over three thousand years old. If I hid there, it would give Dot a chance to look for me. Perhaps she’d feel the terror of losing me, then. Perhaps she’d understand how I feel. Maybe she’d see sense.
It is fully dark now, but from behind the wall of the hut, I can hear voices talking in a language I don’t understand. Every word seems loaded with menace.
The darkness is a physical thing as I force myself to walk past the huts, counting each one, trying to find my way out of the labyrinth. From behind one wall there is soft singing. From another, many voices join in a chant that feels like prayer.
The end of the line of huts, and only the barbed-wire fence in front of me. I squint at the grey silhouettes of my surroundings. I’ve come the wrong way: the gate is on the other side of the camp.
I turn but a noise stops me. Two of the guards are talking and smoking by the fence. The orange glow of the cigarettes lights their faces. I freeze.
It’s him.
Again, my hand finds the hollow at my throat. The place where he once pressed his lips.
I want to turn and run, but I’m afraid they’ll hear me, so I stand very still as I watch another man – a prisoner – being led out from one of the huts, about twenty paces away.
The guards toss their cigarettes down, walk up to the Italian and then, before I have a chance to turn away or cover my face, they begin booting him. The man cries out, clutches his stomach, falls to his knees. They pull him upright, mutter something into his ear, and kick him again.
One of them laughs as he kicks the prisoner.
This time, the man doesn’t cry out, but with every thud of a boot into his body, the breath wheezes from him. No one comes out of the surrounding huts. No protest or protection from the other prisoners.
Who is this prisoner? Was he part of the riot? The guards’ kicks are methodical now, their faces expressionless, bored, as if this is simply something that they do to pass the time.
I remember the men in the infirmary – their bruises, their fear-filled eyes. They are so frightened all the time, like me. The only people who aren’t scared are the guards. Is everywhere like this? Is most of the world made up of terrified people, with just a few men sitting on top of everyone else, laughing as they boot us, then growing bored, but kicking us anyway?
I watch, my entire body frozen. On the ground at my feet is a rock. Sharp along one edge and heavy enough to crack bone. Heavy enough to smash through a man’s skull. I feel the old fury, the old terror – the same mixture of emotions that have kept me sleepless for so many nights since leaving Kirkwall.
And I feel shame. I let him touch me, at first. I led him on.
Bile rises in my throat. I swallow. My eyes water. I close them, pressing my back against the cold wall, counting my breaths, pretending that the rock isn’t there. Pretending that I’m not imagining, time and
