She also said she had taught him all this in the hope that he would have the wits to disappear while she was asleep, but that it was good he hadn’t understood or chosen not to. She wrote something on the pad, tore out the sheet, folded it and put it in the pocket of her father’s fishing smock he was wearing, which made him look like an old salt; on it she had written what was necessary for him to get help from kind folk, who would understand, so he could cross a country and a continent on foot and one day arrive at his childhood home and show his mother that he was alive, all the things he should have done of his own accord: steal her money and one of the boats and disappear while she was asleep because she couldn’t do this, say goodbye.

He couldn’t do this, either – so now they walk out into the silence together and down to the boat shed and push out the færing, his smile is a white wedge in the night; on an island time contracts and stands still, they have no words, the færing is afloat, the full moon is enormous and again she has to point out the cleft in the rugged mainland ridge, just visible beneath Cassiopeia’s electrified barbed wire before it fades into grey down, how many degrees on the compass, the currents, the waves that change direction close to the shore.

He nods.

It is impossible to hold each other, he goes on board and sits on the thwart, an oar in each mutilated hand, ties the straps she has taught him to use around his wrists and starts rowing, rests on the oars and shouts something, carries on rowing. Ingrid has no voice and is invisible, the wind has coiled up inside a snail shell and stays there all night, nothing is happening and nothing has happened.

~

The doctor who hates his own good name has seen tears before, he hasn’t seen much else since he passed his exams in Misery, how long ago was that? He has lost count of the years, even a doctor has both to remember and forget, so he stays in the chair, more or less, during the time it takes for Ingrid to be able to see him through dry eyes, she who thought they had run dry ages ago.

She says she wished it had been her and not Ingvaldsen sitting at the window when the shell exploded, on the day without snow.