Fog Island. Mariette Lindstein

time, she thought. Wild and joyful. Then she thought about what would happen if someone came into the cottage and discovered them on the floor — but it wouldn’t have mattered, not even if it was Oswald himself. It was like they were a runaway train, and no one could stop them.

      Afterwards, as they lay twined together on the rag rug, she decided that forbidden sex blew everything else out of the water.

      She rested her head against his shoulder and they lay like that for a long time. Completely devoid of energy, drained.

      ‘What’s the punishment?’ she asked.

      ‘The punishment?’

      ‘Yes, for what we did.’

      ‘What do you mean, what we did?’

      ‘Stop messing with me!’

      ‘Well, it’s pretty bad. I mean, you get shunned from the group. Dismissed. Sent back to the mainland.’

      ‘No way! Just for having sex without living together?’

      ‘That’s right. But we don’t have to tell anyone, do we? It’s between us.’

      She thought of the library, her dream for the future. How would it feel to tell her family and friends that she couldn’t hack it? That she had been fired?

      ‘Exactly. It has nothing to do with anyone else.’

      I’m sitting on the cliff and staring into the fog.

      It seems strange that the fog lingers even though spring is here. Maybe it’s a sign, calling me to leave.

      You can hardly see the water, only hear the waves crashing against the rocks. A few ducks fly down and land on the surface, where they turn into little brown balls of feathers. Too bad I left my rifle at home. I toss a rock at them and they flap their wings and fly off.

      The wind is picking up and the fog is scattering farther out at sea; I can see the lighthouse out there, a dot floating in the mist. It’s a peculiar sight. Not beautiful — because beauty is a concept I never make use of, an expression used by the weak to show how sensitive they are.

      But it’s calm here by the sea, maybe even peaceful.

      I haven’t received a response to my letter, but it doesn’t matter. Now he knows.

      Everything is ready. I’ve pawned my mother’s jewellery, things she won’t miss until I’m long gone from the island.

      The ticket is safely tucked in my trouser pocket. My backpack is under my bed, the diary and other important documents inside. I think about my exodus. How I will disappear. How it will feel when I come back once it’s all done.

      One last night with Lily is all I need now, a ceremony and an acknowledgement.

      Then I hear a sound. It floats in from the sea and echoes off the rocks. A dull, monotonous bellow from the old lighthouse.

      The foghorn.

      My first thought is that it can’t be true. That the message is for someone else, an old person in the village or some suicidal idiot roving through the forest.

      Because I know what that howl means.

      It’s a warning to someone who’s about to die.

11

      A storm followed on the heels of the fog in early November. The weather service had issued a Class 3 warning, so everyone scrambled to prepare the property. They secured anything loose, brought the animals into the barns, piled sandbags where the water might rise, and tested the generator.

      Sofia looked online to see what the warning meant. ‘Considerable damage to property, considerable disruption to crucial public services, danger to the public.’ She had never experienced a big storm on an island before. Bosse told her about last fall’s storm, how the water level had risen over a metre, and how no one could go outside — the trees had fallen like bowling pins. They’d been without power for a whole week.

      ‘They were too busy fixing the electric lines on the mainland, so we had to wait. But now we have our own backup generator,’ he said proudly.

      The wind began to whine and howl late in the afternoon. Sofia sat in the library, putting the finishing touches to her list of books. She’d poured her heart and soul into that list. Oswald had said he wanted to see it, but she was well prepared. She knew exactly how many shelves the books would take up, how they should be categorized, and why she had chosen each one.

      She also had another, shorter list of books with controversial or erotic contents, which Oswald probably wouldn’t approve of if he’d read them. But he hadn’t read them — she was almost certain of it. She would put the two lists together once she was finished, letting the controversial books mix in with the others. This project had taken up all her attention and she often thought about how good it would look on her CV when she was done.

      But now the storm was raging. It was already dark; it was five o’clock and the wind was supposed to peak around midnight. The aspens behind her building bent in the gusts that rattled the windows. The gale had found every crack in the old building, making it raw and cold inside. She turned up the thermostat before she headed over for dinner. As she crossed the yard, the wind tore at her down jacket and she had to stop and catch her balance to keep from being tossed forward. A branch came flying through the air and landed on the ground as a flowerpot rolled across the yard. She hunched over against the whipping wind.

      Bosse stood up during dinner to give a speech about the rules for the night. Everyone had to stay indoors and be prepared to lend a hand if anything happened. No going on walks. Sofia snorted. As if someone would get the bright idea to go out in the dark and risk being crushed to death by a falling tree.

      By bedtime the gale was even stronger, and it was so dark that nothing could be seen; they could only hear the terrible noise. A few small branches flew by, striking the window. The air was so full of static that it made her skin tingle. She began to feel uneasy. She chatted with Madeleine and Elvira a bit, but everything felt wrong when it was time for lights out.

      ‘We can’t just lie here in the dark, listening to this miserable weather, can we? Do we really have to pull the blinds? What if something happens?’

      Disagreement was on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue, but Elvira agreed with Sofia.

      ‘I don’t want to listen to the wind in the dark either; that’s just terrifying,’ she said.

      So for once, they left the blinds up.

      She had trouble falling asleep in the roar of the storm. The wind brought objects smashing and crashing into the yard, but at last she slipped into a sleep-like state. She drifted in and out for a long time, until she was suddenly yanked out of her dozing: the whole room lit up for an instant and the flash was followed by a loud rumble of thunder.

      She sat up with a start. There was another round of lightning and thunder, but this time it was so loud that she leapt out of bed and ran to the window. Down in the yard she could see a piece of the flagpole, which had broken in half. A couple of figures were fighting the wind on their way to the barns.

      What happened next would be imprinted in her mind in slow motion, even though it was all over in a fraction of a second. A bolt of lightning shot down, accompanied by a deafening clap of thunder. The lightning struck a tall pine behind the barn; the tree seemed to split in two as it crashed onto the annexe behind the manor, taking an electrical wire with it. Great flames leapt from the thatched roof.

      Madeleine and Elvira had woken up too and were sitting up ramrod straight in their beds.

      ‘Shit! It’s on fire!’ Sofia shrieked.

      Suddenly she remembered the fire drills they’d practised with Bosse late last summer — exercises she’d found annoying at the time.