She spits. The taste of resin fills her mouth, tacky on her gums. She bit down on a pine cone; that was earlier. It crunched all the way into her jawbone. Her teeth ground 3and the pine cone crunched, while her hand did what it had to with the steel wire.

The wind pushed at the branches of the trees.

The rust-brown needles fell.

There, on the ground.

It’s later now, she’s on her feet, she’s standing. The sea tussles with the sun behind the horizon. There’s a distant crackle of red. Brooks clink, waterfalls whistle. She has to go, down there. Hesitantly she tilts her pelvis forward. Tenses. One short, stupid moment she’s afraid some of the steel wire has got stuck.

Marita is already in her church clothes. How far ahead, how cold-bloodedly, some might say, she was thinking before she struck out into the darkness. The dress is nice, the cut contemporary, taken from a Danish magazine. Marita sews her own clothes. Reads patterns and comes up with sleeves, bodices, skirt widths by eye. For a long time she’s dressed like someone meant for more than the factory by the harbour and an everyday life among fish. The smell of sour woollen socks in the village hall. Some of them down there think she believes she’s too good for them. The same people also think she isn’t good enough. Marita knows that. She’s fond of them now, in the way you’re fond of people you’re shortly going to leave.

The wind fumbles at her face, her sweaty skin. The first step of the descent is a jolt that runs from the sole of her 4foot through her leg and hips. Her muscles contract, squeezing mucosal membranes, damaged tissue.

She’s got to go now. She goes.

The terrain slopes more gently as she approaches the first houses. Some of the grass in the fields above the village is still high, some raked into heaps. The scent is tart. It sticks to the resting straw. Flicks up and prickles on the tongue. A rolling green scent of bare skin. She walks through it. Her abdomen feels heavy, hard and tight, a ball of small sharp nails.

In the upper village the houses are scattered towards the grassy fields, the open mountains. Many years later, Abbe, my grandfather, will plant his finger on one of these houses in a black-and-white photograph, and ‘There,’ he’ll say, ‘that’s where we lived.’ He’ll explain that the house is enthroned high above the other buildings because it’s old and grand.

Another ten years later, hesitantly, I’ll try out that explanation on Ma and Aunt Ása, in a white-scrubbed kitchen on the very same ground Marita’s walking past in silence now. They’ll laugh a little, those old and knowing women, and Aunt Ása will shake her head. ‘Deary me.’