By day, I walked the earth in all obedience – teacher, daughter and pure-born catch. In the queue for the online computers one Saturday, Sarah Devoner told me how she hoped for a grant from the Council to order more books for the library, and she reached up to pet my head for the luck she needed, thinking she was touching the black hair of a virgin. I did not flinch; I only smiled. Sarah didn’t know who I was now; I was Leah with the tender eyes.

I had knelt in front of him in my bedroom, watched him shake his head and grin, say, ‘ladies first’ as if this was a joke we shared. I followed his lead, let him edge me back onto the bed and ease apart my thighs. He worked his fingers there until something began to reverberate through me. He placed the coldness of his tongue between my legs, making the release sweeter yet.

‘Touch yourself,’ he liked to say as we moved together, which felt like permission or a gift, one that I understood was mine to use when I had only thoughts of him, and not him in the flesh.

Afterwards, we lay there in almost perfect blackness. Other times, when the moon was waxing gibbous, our limbs were picked out, iridescent. I felt none of the shame I had anticipated, no gravitational shift, no fiery judgement. The same ceiling hung above me. The rigging sang against the masts in the harbour as it always had. I felt whole, intact, though I was supposed to feel the opposite.

I understood what my body was capable of now. I had experienced joys it had thus far kept hidden – that I had kept hidden from myself.

Listening to Ben’s breathing as it slowed into sleep gave me something to savour, a sensation to recall, when we were in the staff room together in plain sight, discussing something necessary and mundane. I would think of it in chapel and when negotiating my weekly shopping with the gatekeepers at the Provisions Store. When I looked out to sea and thought of those who had left, I no longer experienced that sharp stab of rejection. Knowing I had lain beside Ben made everything that was painful, boring and difficult on the island – all that I wished to escape – feel entirely bearable.