I had no regrets, and memories were rare. I recalled lethargy, inertia and unease, but could not grasp them. They belonged to someone else. Here was energy, sensation, the beginning, perhaps, of understanding. The beginning, perhaps, of faith? Of belief?

I saw how I was surviving, and it was good. I sometimes remembered the other people, wondered what they were doing, and felt only relief that I was not there with them. I knew already that they would survive. Not in my way, unless they were very lucky, not with this sense of joyful discovery every day and labour that made me happy, if happiness was a word that meant anything to me by then; but in their own more difficult way that forced them to go on in the face of their lives. It seemed to me that when I had been with them, in that other life, that I had lived against myself, and perhaps they had to also. Now I lived with myself. I had done something to them, but I could not feel guilt.

Once, I thought, it would have hurt to know that they would get along without me.

10

10

It was autumn of that first year. I had been alone — what — seven months, more or less. I had seen only a few people — the men delivering furniture, and the farmer down the road, who appeared one day in the summer, rolling up the lane on his tractor; that was all.

The farmer introduced himself as something Brocker — his first name eludes me, although he is still on the next farm — and said he’d heard someone was living at the old McAllister place year-round now, and he was surprised he hadn’t seen me out. He asked me if I needed anything, any help, and he seemed to mean well and so I refused gently. He told me his wife kept chickens, and he sometimes delivered eggs to neighbours, and asked if I would like to be put on his route. Eggs seemed very precious to me by then; they were something that could not be provided here, and they were too perishable to store, and so I agreed. But, I said, there was no point in him struggling up the lane; he could drop them off, a couple of dozen every two weeks, in the car-shanty at the bottom of the lane, and I would pick them up. I would leave money for them there. He agreed, although he seemed puzzled that I didn’t want him coming to the cabin.