The holiday flat on Sylt has one working radiator and a stack of my anatomy textbooks on the kitchen table, which is why I'm here. That is the story I told my mother, and it's even true. I am Finn, twenty-four, halfway through medical school, and my uncle's wife has the key to the place and a week she needed to spend somewhere that wasn't her marriage.
Claire is on the sofa when I come in from the beach with sand in my shoes. She is thirty-six, she has a mug of tea she isn't drinking, and she looks at me over the rim as if I'm a question she'd rather not answer yet.
“You walked to the lighthouse,” she says. “I saw you from the window.”
“You could have come.”
“I could have.” She moves her feet so I can sit. It is a small sofa. We have been careful about the sofa for three days.
I open the textbook on the arm of the sofa and pretend to read the cranial nerves. She turns a page of her own book and doesn't read it either. The fog outside has swallowed the dunes and the light in the room has gone soft and grey, and I can hear her breathing, which is not something you should be able to hear from a woman who is married to your uncle.
“Finn,” she says, and stops. Then: “Your uncle called. He wants to know if I'm coming home Sunday.” She isn't looking at me. She is looking at her tea. “I told him I hadn't decided.” The radiator ticks. The fog presses against the glass. She turns her head at last, and her knee is against mine on the too-small sofa, and I understand that she has just told me something she hasn't told him, and that I am supposed to say something now.
