Skein Island

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I sit at the tiny kitchen table. The salad I prepared sits in a large glass bowl: sliced tomatoes, cubes of feta, a local type of ham. It’s looking limp already. Salad is wrong in this weather, late February, and the white archways and tiled floors of the apartment are too cold to bear. I’ve been here for three hours and I haven’t managed to take off my coat yet. It’s sunset, and warmer outside – warmer than Britain, anyway. But I can’t bring myself to sit out on the veranda, with the mountains rising up behind me like a threat.

Both Heathrow and Heraklion airports were a mess of cancelled flights and missing staff. So many men aren’t turning up for work. They have more important things to do, more spectacular stories to be part of. Moira’s power seems to be bursting out, maybe as a reaction against her years of confinement. It’s changing the world.

At least the car rental agent was a woman. She checked my details and gave me the keys with a quiet efficiency, and I tried not to stare at the love bite on her neck, enormous, like a mark of ownership. She has become a man’s property.

At Heathrow, before my flight was called, I sat in the departures lounge and watched people hurrying between the gates, fear on their faces. A male member of staff in a blue uniform, topped with a perfectly tied cravat, walked up and remonstrated with me about the dangers of travelling. He was so earnest, almost evangelical.

At first I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought he was selling sunscreen when he told me I shouldn’t be without protection. I said, ‘But it’s not even that hot out in Crete right now,’ and he looked so confused. That was when I realised he meant I shouldn’t be travelling without a man to protect me.

The apartment is in a complex, all the balconies facing the same way, overlooking a bright blue swimming pool with a dolphin represented in green mosaic at the bottom. The kitchen and the living room is one room, the fridge next to the sofa that doubles as a bed. I can see the pool through the French windows. The loungers are all stacked at the far end, the top ones in each stack covered by tarpaulin, pulled tight with ropes. The semicircular bar shows signs of use – the wooden stools are still out, and one beach umbrella is propped up against the back wall – but it is not open now. Everything seems deserted. I let myself into the apartment with the key, under the mat, just as the emailed instructions advised when I booked the place. I’ve yet to see another person in this complex.

The feeling of being alone is overwhelming.

How ridiculous it is to feel so scared, when, after all, this is just another island. How different is it from Skein Island? In fact, many more thousands of people live here than on Skein Island, and there are safety nets in place here, to catch you if danger pushes you over the edge.

But that is what I’m scared of. The people, the safety nets. The men who think they’ll be helping me, and the men who’ll want to hurt me. Moira’s influence will be so strong here, and I have yet to think of what I’m going to say to her. What story can I possibly tell her that will hold her attention?

There’s a knock at the door. I freeze.

‘Marianne?’

David’s voice, it’s David’s voice, and the feeling that everything is going to be okay is overwhelming. I stand up too quickly, and knock over the chair. It clatters to the tiled floor.

I run to the door and throw it open. He’s there, looking tall and straight and just like a man I used to know, like stepping back in time; yes, he’s still my husband. Somehow he’s taken us back to the first years of our marriage when there was nothing but the delight of being his wife.

‘Marianne,’ says David, and it undoes me. I go to him, feel him put his arms around me, and I forget everything, everyone else. Whatever happens will happen, but I have David again, just for a few hours, and I don’t know how I ever managed without him, the smell of him, the strength of him. He fortifies me. But it also terrifies me – he shouldn’t be here, so close to Moira, in danger from her presence.

‘No, you need to go. It’s not safe—’

‘I’m fine,’ he says, ‘I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ve been close to her before, remember?’

Of course I remember. In the basement, he rescued me, and he touched Moira when he pulled my mother free of her. And yet he’s okay. For now.

I need him to kiss me.

I lift my face to his and claim him, keep on kissing him, until he belongs to me again. At some point during the process he moves me backwards, shuts the door, shuffles me to the sofa and cradles me on his lap. He touches me, takes off my clothes, so I take off his, and we sit together, naked, not passionate so much as still and whole in the dusk, overlooking the dolphin mosaic in the deep blue pool.

We make love. He says, ‘Like this?’ as he strokes me, very gently, and I sit astride him, lower myself on to him, rock back and forth and take pleasure in him. The dusk turns to dark, and the room is shadowed when we disentangle ourselves and pull apart, just enough to let the world start moving again. Questions are coming, with difficult answers. But not just yet. Not yet.

He takes my hands and leads me to the kitchen, then pours himself some water from the bottle next to the sink. The salad looks even worse off than before.

‘Were you going to eat that?’ he says.

‘It was all I bought at the minimart.’

‘Is it wrong to go for pizza instead?’ ‘I could eat pizza.’ Like a normal holiday. The thought of it makes me smile. It’s perfection.

‘It’s freezing in here,’ he says. He puts down the glass and pulls me back into his arms.

‘Terrible.’

‘It’s not even that cold outside.’

‘I know.’

‘Arnie’s here.’

‘What?’ I pull back, look into David’s face. There is a cut just under one eye, drawing attention to the lines of his cheekbones. I see guilt in his gaze, and determination.

‘Rebecca wrote and told me what you’ve been planning. She asked me to come and talk to you. Reason with you not to do this alone. She and Inger are worried about you. So I came; I had to come and find you, and Arnie said he had to come too.’

‘Arnie was worried about me too?’ The idea of it is incongruous with the mental image I have of my father in The Cornerhouse, flirting with the barmaid, drinking until it’s easy to slump in the corner and dream of a different life.

David caresses the back of my neck. We are still naked, and it’s wrong for this conversation. How quickly it’s become serious. And the big questions are here already, knocking on the door. I move away from him, back to my clothes, and start to dress.

‘Arnie sees the future.’

Of course. All men are heroes, villains, sages or sidekicks. Arnie is a wise man, even though I’ve been trying to make him the villain in my personal story. ‘So what did he see?’

‘He saw us all in the cave. You, me, him and Geoff.’

‘Who the hell is Geoff?’

‘He helped me out.’

‘He’s your sidekick.’ So David the Hero has a team. But who have they been playing against? As David puts on his jeans and shirt I think about the cut under his eye, and suddenly I see that he has diverged from me, led his own story into new and disturbing directions. ‘Did Arnie and Geoff help you find the man who attacked me? Is that it?’

David nods.

‘And did you…’

‘I’ve dealt with him.’

Shouldn’t I feel freed by this information? Instead I’m horrified at what has happened, what I set in motion. ‘How? What… What did you…?’

He moves to the open window, turns his back to me, and says, ‘He asked if you could forgive him, at the end. He said he was sorry.’

‘He was sorry?’

‘The police took him away. For a different crime. Another attack. No need for you to testify. It’s done with. You asked me to deal with it, and I did.’

I go to him, press myself against his back, and feel the tension in his shoulders, his legs. ‘Thank you.’

‘Does that help?’

‘Does it?’ I do the only thing I can. I lie. ‘Yes, that helps. Like you say, it’s done with. You dealt with it.’

There never will be a time when it will be done with. No matter what happens to my attacker, no matter what happens to me. It will be inside my head forever, and I will circle it, like a moth around a bulb, forever getting too close to it, forever getting scorched by that memory. Sometimes I think it would be better to be dead, but I go on, just the same.

Yet more cowardice on my part. I don’t deserve David. I’m beginning to think that I never did.

He turns, and hugs me so tight, as if forgiving the untruths we have just told each other. ‘Arnie and Geoff are sharing an apartment on the other side of the complex. Let’s go and get them and plan our next move over pizza.’

‘There is no next move. I’m going to a cave tomorrow, up in the mountains. On my own. You’re going home. It’s the only way I can do this.’

‘We’ll see,’ he says, in a tone I recognise, and I realise this will have to be a negotiation. When a hero walks into a story, he doesn’t do as he’s told.

An Irish bar that claims to serve the best pint of Guinness on Crete is still open, one in a row of seafront eateries that have shut for the season, and it serves two types of pizza: margherita or Irish sausage. Only Geoff plumped for the sausage option. The waiter brought out discs of undercooked dough with scattered blobs of cheese and tomato on the surface. The Irish sausage pizza is huge and floppy, with a peculiarly yellow cheese, upon which the diced sausage floats. Geoff cuts off strips of pizza, folds them up, and pops them into his mouth as if sampling a delicacy. It’s ridiculous to still care about food at a time like this, but I find I do. I can’t help it. That’s part of being human, perhaps: caring about what you smell, taste, see and hear even when you might be dead tomorrow. Because you might be dead tomorrow.

We are sitting outside, between two space heaters that are doing a fine job of keeping the night’s chill away, around a rough, circular wooden table positioned for a view over the pebbly beach and the rippling sea. It makes a shushing sound, only audible when there’s a pause between pop songs coming from the interior of the empty bar. So far we have concentrated on eating, but I have to take control of the situation and turn their attention back to what I’ve come here to do. Without their interference.

‘Here’s what we know,’ I say, hoping I sound like a general addressing the troops in a key moment of a hard-fought war. ‘The Ideon Andron is a cave on Mount Ida, only ten minutes’ drive away. It’s a tourist attraction now, so it’s fairly easy to get to.’ I think of the video footage I watched on YouTube. Holidaymakers stood around the large mouth of the cave in summer heat, waving at the camera, sunglasses reflecting back, and then the scene panned away over to the sea while a Demis Roussos song swelled up to monstrous proportions. ‘There are four chambers, and the… person I’m looking for is in the last one. She’s very dangerous to men, but she won’t hurt me. So I’ll go in alone, retrieve the statue that belongs back on Skein Island, and then call for you to come and take it away, okay?’

‘I thought we were hunting a monster,’ says Geoff, mournfully, like a child being told the trip to Disneyland is off. I remember him from the library. He would come in every month or so and take out an adventure novel – Wilbur Smith or Clive Cussler – and often he’d bring them back late and have to pay a fine. All I really know about him is that he’s a slow reader. Now I find I like him and pity him in equal measure.

‘Who told you that?’ I ask him.

He points at David. ‘I told them what I knew,’ he says.

‘A goddess,’ says Arnie. ‘Fate.’ It’s the first time he’s spoken since his pizza arrived. It lies untouched before him, as does his beer. Pale and with a permanent frown, he looks familiarly hungover. I wonder if he drank too much on the plane.

‘They’ve played the cubes too.’ David shrugs.

Of course. They’ve all had their own visions of Moira, caused by the water containing her essence. No wonder Geoff looks enthusiastic about going to meet her. He probably thinks he’s going to find some fantasy female with flowing hair and bouncy breasts – a Greek pin-up girl. ‘She will kill you if you get too close. Or you’ll kill each other.’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ says David. ‘We’ll take you to the cave, we’ll wait outside. When you shout for us, we’ll come in. We get it.’

But I don’t believe him. I don’t feel in control of them. They have their own agenda; I can read it on their faces.

‘We all need to be there,’ says Arnie. ‘This won’t work unless we’re there. David, go and order me a – an ouzo, is it? Whatever they drink around here.’

‘You’re sure?’

Arnie nods. As soon as David has left the table, he looks at Geoff. ‘Push off for a minute, lad, all right?’ Geoff gets up, uncomplaining, and slopes off in the direction of the sea.

I’m alone with my father for the first time in months. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘It’s like this. This is David’s fight, not yours. It’s not a woman’s place to take on Fate. You know that.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘The only way this is going to work is if you let David take her on. He touched her, on the island, didn’t he? And somehow he survived. It’s made him too powerful. Like in the big stories of old. Like Ulysses, and Theseus, and all that.’

‘Even those heroes couldn’t beat Fate.’

‘But you think you can?’ He slumps back in his chair, and puts one hand on his forehead. ‘Don’t argue with me, Marianne. I’ve seen it.’

And that, in his eyes, should be the end of the argument. He’s a wise man. Born that way. He has a natural advantage over me, over all women.

He is utterly full of shit and he will never see it. How he loves the high ground, doing what he thinks is best, thinking it’s the only way. Forging letters from my mother and destroying the real letters, deciding I should never know the truth, making such decisions in the name of being a father. And yet failing to be a father in the way that mattered – by listening to me.

But he will listen to me now.

I pick up my beer and throw it in his face.

He is astonished. The beer drips from his grizzled hair, his eyebrows, his nose and chin. He opens his mouth and shuts it.

I hand him a napkin. ‘Didn’t see that coming, did you?’

He mops at his face.

‘So it turns out you don’t see everything after all. You don’t see me. You never did. That’s because I am not under Fate’s control. I’m not a hero or a villain. I don’t have to be David’s little helper, and I will never be able to predict the future. That’s because the future isn’t already written for me. Only men are controlled by Moira, not women. Now do you understand why I can win this fight? I’m not under her control. I’m not under anyone’s control. Not even yours.’

He doesn’t reply. He crumples up the napkin and drops it on the table.

‘I’m sorry that my mother left us and chose a different life. But that was her choice. Not yours. And you have always been too much of a fucking idiot to understand it.’

I stand up and walk off, down to the beach, to where Geoff is picking up pebbles and attempting to skim them across the waves. He’s rubbish at it. I watch him for a while, feeling Arnie’s gaze on my back, making my shoulder-blades prickle.

‘Not enough wrist,’ I tell him, and pick up a stone to demonstrate. It skims three, four, times, before losing all energy and sinking to the bottom. My father taught me how to skim stones when I was very little. We used to go to Camber Sands for holidays, and I’d amaze the other kids with my skimming ability.

I turn around and look up, to the bar. Arnie has gone. He’s probably inside, complaining to David about me, telling him they should leave me behind in the morning.

Over my dead body.

Geoff tries to emulate my skimming style and fails dismally. ‘I never could do this,’ he says.

‘Practice.’

‘That’s what everyone says, but I’ve been practising all my life at everything and I’m still rubbish. Do you know what it’s like to not be good at anything? I bet you don’t.’

‘David said you were a big help to him.’

He looks pleased with this. ‘Yeah, I did a good job, clearing that whole mess up. Sam said—’ He claps a hand over his mouth.

‘It’s all right. I know who Sam is.’

I know enough, anyway. More than I want to know. She’s in David’s life when I am not, and I have no right to hate her for that. But I do anyway.

The sea moves quietly, drawing closer to my feet, then pulling back: an eternal pattern. Behind us, the pop music from the bar changes to a slower song. Geoff sings along, words about not wanting to fall asleep, not wanting to miss a thing.

Suddenly it seems important to find out more about him. ‘Don’t you listen to music at home sometimes?’ I ask him.

‘Not really. I watch telly. Do you like EastEnders?’

‘No, not my kind of thing. Do you live alone?’

‘With my parents.’

‘They must be getting on. I hope you don’t mind me asking – how old are you?’ He looks on the wrong side of middle age but his behaviour is so young, even immature. It’s difficult to get the measure of him.

‘Look,’ says Geoff. ‘It’s not really a big deal, is it? I don’t mind talking about stuff if you like, but I get the feeling you should concentrate on what we came here to do, right? Who cares if my favourite colour is yellow? I’m here to help David. He’s the important one.’

There is nothing I can say to that.

I wish there was something else in his life. I wish he wasn’t just a sidekick, had not been born that way. He is prepared to die for my husband, and he will get nothing in return.

I want to give him a memory that is not about David. So I reach out to him, and take his hands. I pull him into a rhythm, a step to the left, a step to the right, and we dance out the song while he sings along.

He knows every word.

‘This is it.’

The mouth of the cave yawns wide.

A bird overhead makes a curious sound, like a laugh, loud and mechanical. I look up into the clouds, but can’t see it.

It’s been a long morning. The men didn’t leave without me. When I awoke, David was waiting with coffee and a croissant, of all things, claiming to have found them in the minimart down the road. He watched me eat, and told me to wear practical clothes. I picked out trousers and a jumper, utilitarian, and he nodded. Then we went to find Geoff and Arnie.

We shared a car to get here: David driving, Arnie in the passenger seat, looking even worse than before, even though the only beer he swallowed last night was by accident when I threw it over him, Geoff in the back seat with me. The ring road around the island was clear, easy to negotiate, but when David turned off to take the mountain road it became pebbly, potholed. About a mile back we started to encounter debris on the road: rocks, branches. In some cases David had to stop the car and Geoff helped him to move these obstacles aside.

We passed a taverna, shut up, the wooden tables overturned to form a barricade against the front door. I thought I couldn’t feel any more scared, but the tables, in a haphazard, frantic pile, terrified me. It spoke of a future where everything is overturned, abandoned.

When we arrived at our destination, I found myself climbing from the car and into David’s arms. I’ve not been able to let go of him since. I hold his hand, so tight, as we approach the mouth, and stare into the darkness. There’s a set of steps, gouged out of the stone, worn by so many tourists’ feet, and an orange rope set into the wall by metal rings, making handholds. It looks so normal. I must be wrong. Moira must be somewhere else, far away, in a place I would never think of looking.

‘It’s here,’ says David. He lets go of my hand.

I look up into his face and see a faraway fascination, eyes glazed, lips loose.

‘What is it?’

‘The colours. Don’t you see them?’

Geoff comes up to join us. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he says. ‘Like a rainbow. A trail. Leading inside.’

A shout cuts through the silence of the mountain. I spin round. Arnie is on his knees, his back to us, bent forward at the waist, his hands over his face. I run to him. There is blood on his fingers; he is clawing at his eyes, gouging. I take his hands and try to force them down but he’s strong, so strong. I can’t stop him from putting his fingernails into the corners of his eyes and ripping, ripping. David and Geoff grab him, wrestle him, until they have him still, lying on his back on the ground. He stops struggling and starts whispering. I put my ear to his lips, and hear, ‘Not any more, not see any more, no colours, no colours.’

David says to me, ‘Can you hold him while I get the first aid kit?’

I put my hands on Arnie’s chest and David slips off the backpack he’s wearing, then crouches over it, searching through the pockets. I can’t look at Arnie’s face, his ruined eyes. I stare at his hands, lying placidly on the ground. They are slick with his blood.

David unzips a small green case and unwraps a sterile gauze pad, then snips lengths of surgical tape to hold it in place over Arnie’s eye socket. He repeats the action for the other socket. I want to scream at him, tell him to run for help, find a hospital – shouldn’t we all be in the car, breaking speed limits, looking for doctors? But he snips the gauze, methodically, and Geoff watches the procedure with interest.

White tape knitting the remains of his face together, the gauze already staining pink, Arnie lies still, unmoving. I stand up. The broken rocks of the mountains form asymmetrical grey and brown patterns to the sea, which stretches onwards, like the promise of a calmness to come. But not now. Something is building. I can feel it.

‘The colours,’ whispers Arnie, and then he wails, like a dog hit by a car, a noise of such pain and fear that I can’t bear it. I step back; I want to be away from him, my own father, and I would rather that I died than have to hear that sound. He gets to his feet. I take his arms and he shakes me off, then starts to walk, fast, up the path that leads to the higher peaks of the mountains; he doesn’t need eyes, I don’t know how he’s doing it, but he’s climbing higher, leaving the path, dropping to his hands and moving like an animal over the rocks and stones, at speed.

‘Dad!’ I shout after him. He doesn’t look back. I run to David, pull at his arms. ‘Go after him!’

‘No. That’s his choice.’

‘He’s not… He’s damaged himself, he needs…’

David and Geoff turn back to the mouth of the cave. I can hear Arnie’s wails, getting further away, and I never wanted things to be like this, never; this is why I came here by myself. This is not what I wanted. I have to keep them safe. I have to go in alone. I pull myself up straight, try to take control.

‘Get Arnie. Drive him to hospital. Come back for me later.’

David grabs my wrist. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You and Geoff stay here.’

‘No, that’s not—’

‘This is right. I know it. Arnie said it.’

‘No.’ I try to break free, but his grip is so strong. ‘David. Please.’

He kisses me on the forehead, and I hate him for it. The hate, the wash of it over me, unravels my decisions, my certainty, and I feel my face contorting, my tears spilling.

‘Geoff, this is your job. Keep her safe. Keep her out of the cave.’

Geoff nods, very seriously.

‘I love you,’ David tells me, but I can tell he’s already thinking of the colours, the wonderful colours that Moira brings to the world, and he is going to find her and stay with her, because he won’t be able to stop her. And I am a puddle on the floor, I am all tears and no spine, just a woman, a typical weak woman, unable to do anything but wait and despair in equal measure.

He lets me go, and takes off his backpack once more, digging around inside it to produce a small silver flask. He unscrews the lid.

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘I…’

‘Rebecca and Inger sent it to me. It came from your basement.’

There was nothing left from the basement, not after the collapse. I think through what remained: a few pieces of paper, random pages from declarations and one barrel of water. Moira’s water. Her essence, contained in the liquid. Used in tiny amounts to give men a taste of her power.

David is about to drink it.

‘No,’ I tell him, ‘I don’t know what that will do to you.’

He strokes my face, and in that gesture I realise I no longer know him. Even before he drinks, before he faces the monster, he has become a stranger, a protagonist in some terrible tale in which I was never going to be important. He is going on without me, just as it should be. As Moira wants it.

He puts the flask to his lips and drinks. His throat moves, the swallowing motion, so calm, so controlled. He drinks it all, then takes a torch from his backpack, and walks away from me.

I watch him go into the cave. My failure skewers me, drops me to my knees, and Geoff stands over me as I mourn.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The first three caves were easy to negotiate. Not only were the paths clearly set out for the tourists, but the rainbow led him onwards. As long as he stayed in its stream, he felt the rightness of his route.

The third cave was smaller, and at the point that the path ended, the orange rope tied up on the final metal ring to form a double knot, the rainbow took over completely, pulling him towards the darkest area where it disappeared abruptly. David followed, found a hole in the stone walls that became a tunnel, where the rainbow pattern stretched onwards, slow-motion, like an undulating ribbon caught in the currents of the sea. He flicked on the torch, and the rainbow disappeared. Instead there was only the length of the narrowing tunnel, regular and smooth, leading downwards to what looked like a dead end – a fall of rocks and earth. He dropped the torch and wriggled his way into the tunnel, trying not to think of how he might not be able to turn around in such a small space.

The hard, packed surface at the end of the tunnel was as deliberate as a wall. Could the monster have placed it there? David put his palms to the rocks and pushed, and it did not give. He punched it, short jabs of his fist, as there was no space to bend back his elbow for a larger blow. After five attempts he felt the skin on his knuckles split, and the pain of it lanced through him, fierce and prophetic. It awoke the liquid in his stomach, and he felt it expand, grow warm, uncurl through his veins, snakes of intent, of meaning. They took him over, slid out through his fingertips like the tendrils of plants and slid between the cracks in the rock surface, so that the stones trembled, shuddered, collapsed into water, breaking like bubbles. The tendrils receded and the water filled up the tunnel. The light of the torch fizzled and died, and it was easy to see the rainbow once more, to swim along its wake.

The tunnel widened and David changed from dog-paddle to breaststroke, kicking out his feet. The trail tilted upwards, and he angled his body to follow, feeling the beginning of pain in his lungs, the constriction of his throat, the demand for oxygen, shouting for it, screaming, and the involuntary breath that followed, allowing the water to enter him, sink into his chest, icy stones.

It didn’t hurt any more. He swam on in perfect silence, encased in water.

The rainbow grew lighter, turned to white, and he broke through to the surface of a small, calm pool, reached out with his hands and clutched at hard rock once more, a flat surface onto which he pulled himself, and stood upright. He felt no need to cough or clear his lungs. His clothes were not wet. It wasn’t only that he wasn’t in pain. He had moved beyond such considerations to something new; nerve-endings and neurological signals had become controllable. He was impervious. The white path of light called him onwards, and he walked forward, without hesitation, through shades of darkness, until the cave walls opened out into a holy cathedral of space, as tall and steepled as the mountain, reaching up in an orderly worship of stalactites. It was the ordained place: a home, a birth, a tomb. The space where a hero could slay a monster.

All his life, he had been waiting for the moment when he became the man he was born to be. He had lived in the promise of it, standing upright, being a defender, a protector. This was his perfect moment. All other memories would pale in comparison to it: his wedding day, the death of Mark, the saving of Sam, had all been trial runs for this.

He felt it grow near.

His body assumed a fighting stance, hands in bunched fists, feet apart.

It homed in on him, and it was a woman, so familiar, as soft as Sam, as sharp as Marianne. It was the perfect woman, a goddess. He had met her before, in the back room of The Cornerhouse, where she had enveloped him, penetrated him, slain him. This time he had to be the conqueror.

She cleaved to him, moulding to him in a rush of sex scent and promises that turned the cave crimson as blood, and she offered him her submission, the sinking of their bodies together, into each other. He felt the danger of it, the secret victory that lay within her offer.

But he wanted it, this death at the behest of his flowing damsel – to be swarmed, surrounded, kept within forever. She was close enough to touch, floating in front of him, soft pink gauze wrapped around her, legs and smile spread wide, her eyes shut, her hands reaching for the zip of his trousers. He should have known all along, they all should have known that there could be no fighting this, no way to win, to control it, he would kill for it, make the world deserving of it, be the man it could marry, change himself, change the earth, the stones, the water. Her hands found him, guided him inside her, and he watched her face, wanting her eyes to open, to be submerged, suspended in their stare—

‘David!’

His name, sudden, rebounding inside the cavern, brought him back to himself. Geoff had emerged from the tunnel, his eyes wide, fixed on the monster. David had no idea what he was seeing, but it transfixed the man, in a place beyond fear or desire. And Marianne was crawling through, slithering out of the tunnel. What could she see? There was no truth in this place, no way to trust his senses. David felt a compulsion, so strong, to reach up and tear out his eyes, then rip off his ears, his tongue, but he refused to obey, found the strength to keep his arms down by his sides.

Geoff shrieked, and the cave reverberated with his pain. He ran towards Moira, his arms outstretched. David didn’t know whether he meant to love her or kill her, but either way, it made no difference. She reached into his chest and took his heart in her hands, a simple gesture, like plucking a flower, and squeezed it between her palms as he shuddered, his body convulsing, his head flopping. Then he dropped to the ground.

She tilted her head as she surveyed her conquest, then looked up.

She wanted him to join her.

David felt it, the strength of it, like the playful command of a lover when the game evolves from foreplay into capitulation. She wanted his eyes on her, she wanted to eat him up with her gaze.

He met it, and understood.

She loved to weave stories, stories of men and their great deeds. And, like every child who delights in fairy tales, she wanted to some day be part of the story: a princess, a damsel, a prize. But her loneliness could not be pierced. It was inviolate. Every man who drew close to her went mad under her gaze, misunderstood what he was meant to be, his part in the pattern. It left her desolate, empty. After thousands of years of hearing stories, she wanted to have a voice of her own, but it was an impossibility, and she was awash with her impotent rage. So many men would make more stories, new stories. She would make the world anew as a dark and dangerous place. Every man would have a part to play in it.

Unless he satisfied her. Unless he gave her a story, and saved the world.

He moved towards her, and she held out her arms to him. The power of the liquid coursed through him; he could match her, he could be her equal – a new god. This cave would be the birthplace of a new Zeus. He stripped off his clothes and, naked, penetrated her; she wrapped her legs and arms around him and undulated, her cold flesh against his, attempting to smother him in her love, but he kissed her, hard, forced his tongue into her empty mouth and demanded her obeisance.

‘No,’ said a voice, such a small voice, and then there was a blinding pain behind his left ear that overcame everything and left him falling, falling, into a deep, soft bed of darkness that carried him away into oblivion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I drop the torch and kneel beside David’s body. I manage to turn him over, and put my ear to his chest. He still breathes, in and out, still living, still mine.

Moira is so close, so angry. I feel her reach out to me, to tear me apart for taking away her sport, but I know now what I must say to stop her. The words begin to leave my mouth, and she freezes, can’t help herself, has to listen as I close my eyes and tell her:

I stop speaking and open my eyes.

Moira stands in front of me, so still. Her face is old, and tired, and her body sags, her breasts low, her legs sturdy. The wrinkles around her eyes and mouth are long lines of experience, and her expression holds such sadness, along with deep, troubled acceptance, as if she has forced herself to look squarely at the world and found it wanting, yet unchangeable.

She is stone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It takes all the crew of the ferry to place the crate in the completed tower, but the men who touch it seem unbothered by it.

So many strings had to be pulled to get her here, but now she is, and once we are alone David prises back the boards to reveal her – Moira, my monster, a statue once more. Except this time, as I look at her, I see no inkling of intelligence, no sorrows in a changing face. It is a sculpture of an aging woman, heavy breasts, waist thickened, eyes half-open and capable hands set on hips, as if to say: So that’s the way it is.

‘We did it,’ David says.

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I did it.’

I am not willing to play this game. He’s not a hero any more; I have made that clear. When he came round, he wanted to believe that he had saved me, saved the world, and just couldn’t remember it. But I keep refusing to feed his fantasy, and I’m certain that he hates me for it. It’s breaking my heart, a little more every day, as he realises I won’t ask him to keep me safe. Not ever again.

‘What will happen now?’

That’s a question I can’t answer. This is what I thought I wanted – a level playing field. But now I have it, the length and breadth of it, stretching away from me in all directions, it is terrifying. No protectors any more for us women. It’s nobody’s duty to keep us safe.

He steps back, and moves to the row of windows in my tower, overlooking the lay of the island: the swimming pool, the reception building, the rows of bungalows. It is a miniature town from up here, toy buildings and felt carpet fields. Spring is coming, and the sun shines upon it with the fervour of a blessing. I will spend a lot of time up here, enjoying it, what it gives to me. It means something important to own such a place.

‘I’m reopening it as a centre,’ I tell him. ‘A place for a week out, to learn about yourself, to reflect. To make friends. Write a declaration. But not only for women. For anyone who needs time away from being what they think they’re meant to be.’ I will read these new declarations aloud to Moira, and she will appreciate stories of all kinds, about many things. There are so many stories in the world.

‘If it’s a place for new stories then I don’t belong here. My story is done, isn’t it?’ He turns back to me, and in his face I see something horrible, that wounds me more than I ever thought it could; I see relief. He is glad to have an excuse not to stay.

‘You’ll go back to Bassett?’

‘That’s where I belong.’

‘Do you think Arnie will be there?’

David hesitates, then shakes his head. ‘I don’t think he’s coming back.’

I have to agree. Is Arnie dead, like poor Geoff, whom I persuaded into the cave in order to save David? I don’t know. I didn’t think losing Arnie would be any great loss, but it is, it is. I am fatherless for the first time. All of my men are being stripped from me, and it is a horrible feeling.

Arnie cannot watch over me, and I have emasculated David.

He is free of the need to protect me.

Suddenly I realise what he will do. ‘You’ll go back to Sam.’

He doesn’t reply.

I don’t want to be alone, like Moira. For the first time I understand how much she must hate being alone.

‘Sam needs me. I can’t explain it.’

I look into Moira’s face once more. It is unchanged.

So that’s the way it is.

‘I’ll stay tonight, if that’s okay. Have you got space for me?’

‘Yes, of course.’ I can’t imagine touching him ever again. ‘In one of the guest bungalows. Reception will set you up with whatever you need.’ I want him to get out, to get out, out, out. I want to hit him, cry, rage, break open the statue and make Moira turn him back into my hero.

He frowns, crosses to the door, and descends from my tower. Time passes in slow increments and realisations. I am alone.

I am loveless. I have only myself to blame. And, right at the moment when I thought the danger had passed, I need to find new reserves of strength. I must get through this abandonment, and so must all other women, all over the world.

There’s a knock at the door. Rebecca and Inger enter, come to stand beside me, and look at Moira with expressions of fear and fascination.

‘We’re sorry,’ says Inger. ‘About going behind your back. But we knew you couldn’t do it alone.’

‘And we were right, weren’t we?’ Rebecca chimes in. She does so love to be right.

Inger looks very young today. Her skin shines; her lips are full and pink.

Rebecca looks much older. She has stopped applying henna to her hair, and only the bottom third of her curls are red. The rest is a dirty grey, and it makes the yellowing skin around her mouth and neck so much more obvious.

I put my arms around them, one on each side, and I think that we are like sisters in this endeavour: Inger the brave, Marianne the manipulative, Rebecca the cynic. We share a vision of a future, and we will work towards it.

‘So how do we do it?’ says Inger. ‘Do we accept everyone at this island, and hope they’ll all get along somehow? How can we show people everywhere that the world has changed? That they can tell new kinds of stories?’

How many stories are there that we can tell? When I think about my own past, couldn’t I be the hero, the victim, the sidekick, the sage, even the villain, all at the same time? Is it really up to me to decide which part of my history defines me?

I look into the eyes of the statue, then at the faces of my sisters, and I tell them the truth.

I have absolutely no idea.