S Bolton - Sacrifice

'He's from Unst?'

Duncan shook his head. 'No, I'm talking about secondary school.' That made more sense. On Shetland, children from the more remote islands often attend secondary school in Lerwick, either boarding during the week or staying with relatives.

'Is that it?' I said.

Duncan sat up. He looked me up and down. 'You coming in?'

I leaned across, dipped my hand in the water and took it out again quickly. 'No,' I said.

Duncan picked up the loofah and held it out to me. It looked like some sort of kinky invitation. If I picked it up, we would have sex. If I didn't, I was rejecting him and would have to deal with sulks for the next couple of days. I thought for a second. My period was due any day but you can never be sure about these things. It was worth a try. I reached out for the loofah. Duncan leaned forward towards the tap, exposing his sleek, strong back.

'I prefer my handmaidens naked,' he said.

With one hand, I started to rub the loofah up and down his back. With the other, I unfastened the buttons of my shirt.

AFTER DUNCAN AND I HAD` MADE LOVE I SLEPT DEEPLY. Until something woke me. I lay in the half light of our bedroom, listening to Duncan's steady breathing beside me. Otherwise silence. Yet I'd heard something. People don't wake suddenly from deep sleep for no reason. I listened hard. Nothing.

I turned to look at the clock: three-fifteen a.m., and about as dark as it ever got on Shetland during the summer, which wasn't very. I could see everything in the room: cherry-wood furniture, lilac light- shades, free-standing mirror, clothes slung over the back of a chair. A pale glow like early dawn shone around the blind.

I got up. The rhythm of Duncan's breathing changed and I froze. After a few seconds I walked to the window. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, I pulled up the blind.

It wasn't the brightest of Shetland nights; it still appeared to be raining softly, but I could make out just about everything: white police tent; red-and-white-striped tape; sheep in the neighbouring field; the solitary spruce tree that grew at the bottom of what passed for our garden; Charles and Henry, wide awake, with their noses poking over the fence, the way they do when someone appears in the next field. Horses are friendly – and nosy. If they see someone close by, they hurry over for a better look. So who were they looking at?

Then I saw the light.

It appeared inside the police tent, a faint brightness shining briefly behind the white canvas; flashing quickly then disappearing; then again. Flash, sweep, flicker.

Something stroked my bare hip. Then Duncans warm body pressed against me from behind. He swept my hair up, pushed it over one shoulder and bent down to kiss my neck.

'There's someone in the field,' I said. His hands slid around my waist and moved higher.

'Where?' he asked, nuzzling the place behind my ear.

'In the tent. There's a torch. There.'

'Can't see anything,' he said as his hands found my breasts.

'Well, you won't. You're not looking.' I pushed his hands away and they dropped down to the window ledge.

'It'll be the police,' he said. 'Dunn said they'd be leaving someone here overnight.'

'I suppose.'

We stood staring out into the darkness, waiting, but the light didn't appear again.

'Did they hurt her?' asked Duncan after a minute or two, so quietly I could barely hear him.

I turned in surprise, glared at him. 'They cut out her heart.'

Duncan's pale face drained. He stood back, arms falling to his sides. Instantly I regretted being so brutal. 'Dunn didn't tell you that? I'm sorry…' I began.

He shushed me. 'It's OK. Did they… he… was he cruel?'

'No,' I said, remembering everything Dr Renney had told us about the strawberries, the anaesthetic. 'That's the strangest thing. He… they… they fed her, gave her pain relief. They almost seemed to… care for her.' They cared for her. Before they tied her up and carved Nordic symbols into her skin, of course. What kind of sense did that make? I shut my eyes, but the image was still there.

Duncan rubbed his hands over his face. 'Jesus, what a mess.'

There didn't seem an immediate answer to that, so I said nothing. Duncan made no move to go back to bed and neither did I. After a while I started to feel the chill. I closed my eyes and leaned against him, seeking warmth rather than intimacy, but he wrapped his arms around me and his hands started to move down my back. Then stopped. 'Tor, would you consider adoption?' he said.

I opened my eyes. 'You mean a baby?' I asked.

He squeezed one buttock. 'No, a walrus. Of course I mean a baby.'

Well, he'd certainly taken me by surprise. I hadn't thought about adoption, hadn't considered we were anywhere near that stage. We had any number of boxes to tick first. Adoption was the last resort, wasn't it?

'It's just there's a good programme on the islands. Or, at least, there always used to be. It's not difficult to adopt here. A newborn, I mean. Not an emotionally screwed-up teenager.'

'How can that be?' I said, thinking that the adoption laws here were surely the same as for the rest of the UK. 'How can Shetland have more babies than anywhere else?'

'I don't know. I just remember it being discussed when I lived here before. Maybe we're more old-fashioned about single mothers.'

It was possible. Churches were better attended here than on the mainland and, on the whole, moral standards seemed comparable with what they'd been in the rest of the UK some twenty or thirty years ago. In Shetland, teenagers stand up on buses to let old ladies sit down. On the roads, drivers wait by passing spaces instead of racing to beat the oncoming car. Maybe this was a real possibility that I hadn't considered.

Then Duncan took hold of me round the waist and lifted. He put me down on the window ledge. The glass was cold and slightly damp against my back. He lifted my legs and wrapped them around his waist. I knew exactly what was coming. The ledge was just the right height and we'd done this before.

'Of course,' he said, 'we could just keep trying.'

'For a little while longer maybe,' I whispered, watching him lower the blind.

And we kept on trying.

SARAH SAT ON THE EDGE OF HER CHAIR. SHE HAD THE look in her eye: angry, ashamed, impatient; the one that would increase in intensity month by month, anger gradually giving way to despair as the arrival of each menstrual period signalled a fresh failure. Of course, it could also disappear, completely and for ever, the second she knew she was pregnant. I knew that look so well. I saw it all the time. And not just on the faces of patients.

Robert's expression, on the other hand, I couldn't read. He had still to look me in the eye.

Although this was their first meeting with me, Sarah and Robert Tully had already run the gauntlet of tests, examinations and interviews with counsellors. They were running out of patience. He wanted the pats on the back down the local and the weekends browsing through model-train brochures. She wanted her feet up in stirrups and a good dose of artificial hormone coursing round her veins.

'We were hoping you'd put us on the IVF programme,' she said. 'We know there's a waiting list for NHS treatment but we have some money saved up. We want to start right away.'

I nodded. 'Of course. I understand.' Oh, how well did I understand: Get me pregnant. I don't care how you do it. I don't even want to think about everything that comes after – the nausea, exhaustion, backache, stretch marks, total lack of privacy, and then pain beyond anything I could ever have imagined. Just wave your magical, medical wand and make it OK for me too.

What I was about to suggest they would find incredibly hard to accept; patience and the biological urge to reproduce don't make comfortable bedfellows. 'There is another way forward that I'd like you to think about.'