After they had eaten and Ingrid wanted to do more of what was her or to be as she had once been, he held her back and said Leningrad and academy and engineer, he had said this before, now it etched itself into her like a belief and a conviction. She sat down and placed her school sketch pad between them, depicting fir cones that looked like shells, flowers, boats and mountains, and he wrote the number 22, it could have been his age or his year of birth, it didn’t make any difference, and even if their ways were soon to part, she asked him to write more.

He took the pencil in his left hand and held it like a poised dart, placed the point on the paper and wrote letters she could neither decipher nor pronounce, a single slow line, then one more, the way you write your mother tongue, it struck her, and he put down the pencil underneath, as if drawing a line underneath everything, unless it was to cross it all out.

She turned round the pad and noticed that every line began with the same symbols, in the same order, he had written three paragraphs each containing three short lines, one beneath the other, they not only looked similar, they were identical, she asked him what they meant.

He laughed and pushed the pad aside.

Ingrid sat watching him until she had to turn her face to the window. She said there was a light cloud covering, and the sea was as smooth as a mirror, that was the signal, not the way he had put down his pencil, and he understood.

They went to the loft and lay beside each other without moving.

They got up and dressed one another, the rucksack was packed, she had given him all the money and ration coupons she had, as well as a knife and a compass. She had explained that he had to take account of drift, read the direction and rhythm of the waves, four or five hours to the mainland, now that he had learned how to row and sail, tonight there was so little wind he would have to row.