She moves slowly to the ladder, readies her stick, lifting it high. But when the man’s voice comes a third time, she knows it. The stick falls from her suddenly weak hands.

Twenty

‘Eren?’

The creaking stops, and then Ulf’s head emerges from the platform’s railings. He barks joyfully, and backs up, scampering headlong, almost falling, down the ladder as Eren leans over, his face split wide open in a smile.

Lisbet returns it, a relief so strong it spreads from her chest and stretches through all her fingers. Ulf has reached her and is licking her fingertips, but she can no more break Eren’s gaze than scale the linden’s trunk with her bare and swollen hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Eren finally. ‘He followed me. I tried to send him back.’

She shakes her head, and laughs, an abrupt chaos of sound that sends a small bird flapping from the trees behind her. Her heart has not yet forgotten the danger, and throttles her throat. She presses her hand to it, tries to force it back down. Colours burst in front of her eyes, pigmented like the stained glass in the cathedral’s windows.

‘Lisbet?’ Impossibly, Eren is beside her. ‘I have frightened you.’

‘No. Yes. I am glad it is you.’ Her voice sounds insubstantial, high and girlish. She sits on the log, to ground herself. Her vision dances, bathing Eren’s brown skin with the gold and glitter of sunlight. She had forgotten the sun could be a soft thing, giving beauty. She presses her hand to her eyes, and withdraws it with a hiss of pain.

‘You have a splinter,’ says Eren, taking her hand. His are cool and dry, miracles against the throbbing, slick heat of her palm.

She tries to focus on it, his hands on hers, sees the splinter like an extra vein thrust crosswise through the meaty heel of her hand, darker than his skin against hers.

She is no sop but the sight makes her queasy. ‘It’s deep.’

She scrabbles at the place with her other hand, and he shushes her like a child.

‘I will try.’

He pours water from the kettle over his hands, then kneels before her on the crackling ground. She watches the sworl of his crown, a perfect spiral disintegrating into tangles of black curls, the remains of broken leaves where he must have lain on the platform. She remembers how shocking his gesture had been when he’d offered to walk with her. And now here he is on his knees before her, both his slim, cool hands upon her, his eyes intent upon her skin.

He probes the tender places around the splinter, and she chews her tongue as the wood moves. ‘Will you have to split the skin?’

‘With a needle, perhaps,’ he says. ‘Shall I fetch one, with your permission?’

But she does not want him to loose her hand, cannot abide the thought of returning to the house. She shakes her head, tightens her grip on his and winces. He returns his attention to her hand, bringing his head so low over it his hair tickles her palm.