I push my face up to the infirmary window, but all I can see is the greyish churn of the fog, pressing against the cold glass like some slick-backed beast.
It’s a ridiculous curse, the one they say is on this island. That if two people fall in love here, someone will die. I tell myself it’s a story, a foolish superstition. But that doesn’t stop the sick twisting in my stomach, and the thought that I cannot escape: the story tells us that someone will die, but it doesn’t say who. A lover, it says, but which one?
I hear soft footsteps behind me and turn suddenly to find Bess behind me, her eyes wide as if she is frightened of me. I must, I realize, look half wild. I smooth my hair and press my mouth into a smile. ‘Have you seen Dot?’ I try to keep my voice level.
‘No, I . . . Not since I heard you . . . talking to her last night about the chapel.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, turning away, bundling myself into my coat, my scarf.
‘You can’t go out in this,’ Bess says.
‘I have to find her.’
‘But the cliffs!’ Bess voice rises in pitch. ‘Con, it’s not safe.’
She grabs my arm but I brush her off.
The men are sitting up in their hospital beds, watching me, talking to each other in a rapid patter of Italian. What are they saying? What are they planning? I dig my hands into my coat pockets and push my shoulder against the door. Gasping at the cold air, I call Dot’s name.
The mist swirls around me, swallowing the sound. It’s like shouting with a cloth pressed over my face. Suffocating.
For a moment, the memory of his hand covering my mouth, and how small my smothered scream had sounded.
What if he’s waiting out there for me?
I close my eyes against the nausea. I dig my nails into my palms. ‘No time for this, Con,’ I say aloud, to myself, to the mist, to whatever creature or human may be listening.
I make myself walk, counting my steps. I can see perhaps two paces in front of me, but any further is a swirling grey blur.
I set off in the direction of the bothy – it is up the hill from the camp, so I know I am walking away from the cliffs. Dot and I have rarely been back to the bothy – when I asked if we might return there, away from the camp, she’d shaken her head. At first, when I was ill, she’d said I needed to be near to the infirmary. Once I was better, she still insisted that we stayed. We both knew why, although neither of us said it.
In the back of my mind, as I walk, is the fear of Dot returning to the bothy alone and discovering the necklace I’d hidden in a gap between the bricks in the fireplace. I imagine her questions – how would I answer them? How can I lie to her? My cheeks burn and my pulse quickens at the thought.
A gust of wind, and the mist clears for a moment. Ahead of me, I catch sight of a dim shadow, a figure moving quickly up the hill.
‘Dot!’ I shout, into the mist. The figure doesn’t stop – if anything it moves faster, then disappears as the fog regroups.
‘Dot!’ I call again. And I can hear footsteps now, fading, as if someone is fleeing from me.
I begin to jog, blinking against the damp air, then stretching my eyes wide, but it’s useless. I can’t see or hear anything. I run faster, wishing she’d stop.
She must be thinking of the argument we’d had last night, when she’d told me about the chapel. For two weeks, after Dot had helped Cesare across to Major Bates’s office, I’d known something was wrong. The prisoners all seemed suddenly excited, and Dot often talked to Cesare in whispers, both of them laughing. He made quick, expansive gestures with his hands, and I watched, thinking how strong they looked, how easily they could crush her.
‘What’s he telling you?’ I’d asked her, time and again. But she wouldn’t say.
Finally, last night, Bess and I had been sweeping the infirmary when we’d watched a lorry drive past, loaded with sheets of metal and skeins of wire, followed by another two lorries, each carrying a metal hut.
‘What are they doing?’ I asked Bess, expecting her to be as baffled as I was.
‘Oh,’ she said casually, hardly looking up, ‘that’ll be for the chapel.’
‘The what?’
She stopped sweeping. ‘Didn’t Dot mention it?’
I waited until the evening, until the curtain was drawn around our little sleeping area.
‘When were you going to tell me that the men are planning to build a chapel?’ I demanded.
‘I thought you knew.’ Dot’s eyes slid from mine.
Behind the curtain, one of the men coughed.
‘So, they’re staying here, are they? They’re living on the island.’
‘I don’t know, Con.’ Her voice was soft and she held out her hands. ‘What’s the harm if they are –’
‘You don’t see it, do you? Or else you see it and you’re pretending not to. As long as he is here, you’ll be happy.’
Dot stepped back, her expression suddenly cold. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
I watched the movement of her throat as she swallowed. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine his hand around my neck. So many times since that day last summer I’d looked in the mirror and traced the invisible outline of each of his fingerprints. He hadn’t squeezed hard at first. He’d been so tender when he gave me the necklace – he’d told me he loved me.
I blinked, to bring myself back to the infirmary. ‘You can’t trust Cesare. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he might do.’
‘I’m not you,’ she said.
And I knew what she meant: that she wasn’t naive, that she wasn’t allowing herself to
