My father was a lighthouse inspector. He didn’t just check the ones dotted along the Cornish coast but also those on the other side of the Channel, from Cherbourg to Saint Mathieu, just north of the roadstead of Brest. The sea around there was chock-full of lighthouses. He was able to hear if there was too little air in the bottles that heated the revolving lights. He could also hear if a storm was brewing by the whistling of the wind through the tower and open windows. And he would always steel himself before climbing a tower, especially during the winter months, when it felt as if he were ascending a fragile finger that rose mischievously from the foaming waves, while the waters crashed again and again around him, billowing up against the sides of the beacon like a giant collar of spray and rage.

My father told me to forget about the height of the staircase when I entered a lighthouse and to concentrate instead on the first step, taking it step by step from there.

“That’s how you confront a challenge that seems overwhelming at first. That’s how you manage.” Shrink the world, be precise; pay no heed to the long night before you but only to the next moment. That’s what he told me. “You must follow the path to the very end to get an overview of the whole journey, Edwina.”

I throw my arms around the pillow and press my face into it. It seems like an age before I finally doze off, and then Henri’s there, kissing my tummy. I can feel his lips and his breath. I feel him kissing the sides of my rib cage and up my neck, his mouth brushing mine and his lips on my eyelids, kissing me the way only he could and nobody else.

When I open my eyes to look at Henri and tell him I’ve had a dream, a terrible dream in which I chased him away and he fell into a coma after a mysterious accident, he isn’t there. Only my eyelids are cool, as if they’ve been kissed, really kissed, because the wind blowing in through the open window has dried the fine film of moisture on my delicate skin.

I’m forty-four. Henri rejected me long ago. I owe him nothing, let alone to sacrifice my life for his! No, I feel neither guilt nor any willingness to make sacrifices. I sense that any decision I make will be wrong.

I can decide against Wilder. Or Henri. Or myself.

Sam

Every evening my mother showers before she goes to bed. She applies a body lotion she orders from Paris that smells like pastry, and then sits in the kitchen in her knickers and bra until her skin has absorbed the cream. In the meantime she reads one of those pastel-colored novels that are on special offer at the supermarket.