Алия Уайтли - Skein Island

He didn’t remember the drive home, or being put to bed. When he woke, it was bright outside. A cold, crisp winter sun penetrated the curtains, and Sam was beside him, naked, her mouth open, her legs splayed in sleep.

And downstairs, on the doormat, waiting for him, was a package from Skein Island.

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?’