II

Rebecca quickly assessed the damage. Her own blood was smeared over the controls and wheel, and the floor of the bridge was covered in half an inch or so of redstained water that washed back and forth with each lurch of the boat. She looked outside and saw no sign of Daniel, so for a terrible moment she feared he’d been swept overboard by that last great wave; but then he emerged from the engine hatch, and her heart started beating normally again. He looked her up and down with stony eyes before vanishing below, reappearing in dry clothes carrying bottles of drinking water, a first-aid kit, two towels and some bedclothes. He soaked up water with a towel, then swabbed the floor dry and laid out blankets, sheets and a pillow. He took the wheel from her, put the engine on slow ahead, set and locked a course safely out to sea. ‘Lie down,’ he said.

She tried nonchalance. ‘I don’t take orders from—’

‘Not one word,’ he warned. ‘I’m too fucking angry. Now lie down.’

She got down and stretched out on the makeshift bedding. He poured a sachet of antibiotic into a glass, stirred in water, made her drink it all. ‘Your hand,’ he said, when she’d drained it.

‘Therese is—’

‘Give me your hand.’

‘Therese is a trained nurse. We can be there in—’

‘The longer you leave coral cuts, the worse they infect.’ He elucidated clearly, as though she were an idiot, a child. ‘The worse the infection, the worse the scarring. You want to be scarred for life? No? Then give me your fucking hand.’ She let him take it. It was trembling violently with indignation. He held it firm and studied her left palm and wrist, torn and bleeding. He rinsed it with water, cleaned out the grit and sand with cotton buds from the first-aid kit then dried it thoroughly, salved it with antiseptic cream, bandaged it with gauze, cloth and tape. He kept getting up to make sure they were still clear of the reefs. Occasionally, he’d take them a little further out to sea, where it was calmer. Night had fallen fully by now, making the lamplight seem brighter. When both her hands were dressed, he turned his attention to her ankles, shins and calves. It tickled when he examined her soles; she clenched her toes into fists. ‘Turn over,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Turn on to your front.’

‘I can do this myself,’ she told him.

‘Don’t be a child. You can’t do anything with those hands.’

She turned reluctantly on to her front. He grimaced when he saw the damage, causing her to look around at the back of her right leg and the inside of her thigh, so badly torn by the coral that blood had glued her skin to her shorts. He tried to peel the fabric delicately away, so that he could get at the cuts beneath, but it hurt enough that she sucked in breath. ‘Quickly,’ she said.

‘Are you sure?’

She clenched her legs and buttocks in anticipation. ‘Now.’

He ripped the fabric away, scorching her tender skin like a match struck against a wall, but she didn’t make a sound. It wasn’t as bad beneath as she’d feared, however. She watched him as he cleaned, waiting for him to take some kind of liberty; but he did nothing. It made a woman wonder. Homosexuality was an intriguing topic for an evolutionist. If natural selection insisted on anything, after all, it was the primacy of procreation. She’d had fierce arguments on the subject with colleagues convinced there must be some sophisticated genetic advantage to homosexuality, like co-operative breeding; but dedicated adaptationists were always looking for convoluted explanations where none were needed. They forgot that a drive was distinct from its purpose and effects. The purpose of a car engine wasn’t to radiate heat after a long journey; yet it did. Human blood was red because red was the colour of its optimum chemical composition under certain conditions, not because the colour itself was useful. The blunt truth was that natural selection was imperfectly efficient. It left anomalies and glitches everywhere. Nature favoured lustful creatures because they left more offspring; but the mechanisms of lust existed separately from procreation, too. ‘So do you have someone special, then?’ she asked. ‘Back in England?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean a woman, Daniel. Or a man, maybe.’

He returned to his work, snipping neat strips of gauze, bandage and plaster. ‘They call it a private life for a reason,’ he said.

‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘You can trust me.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think you’ve just proved that I can’t.’

Something pulsed inside her. This man wasn’t gay. She’d known it from the moment he’d arrived at the lodge, from the way he’d treated her last night, how he’d watched her oiling herself earlier. He was just in control of himself, that was all. He pinned the last bandage in place. ‘You’ll need to change them tomorrow. Maybe your friend can do it for you.’

‘Yes.’ She struggled to her feet, refusing to show pain. ‘And thank you.’ She nodded towards the reef. ‘Thank you for everything.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘You need me to guide you through the reefs?’

He nodded at the charts, the GPS, the sonar. ‘I can handle it.’ He turned his back on her, opened the throttle a little, headed them towards shore.

Rebecca stood there uncertainly, but he didn’t look round. She left the bridge and hobbled below, changed into fresh dry clothes. Her cuts reopened as she stretched and turned; the sensation sharp yet not altogether unpleasant. The engine churned into reverse; they came to a stop. Home already. She climbed back up, one step at a time, just as Daniel grabbed the marker buoy with a boat-hook and then secured the Yvette to her fixed mooring. When he was done, he stripped down to his boxers and jumped into the sea to test it for deepness. It came up to his chest. He beckoned her over to the stern, gave her a fireman’s lift to the beach, set her down. He nodded at the Yvette. ‘I need to put her to bed,’ he said. ‘You okay to wait?’

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. She hobbled over the dunes, up the dark path to Eden. Black birds screeched and scattered from the lodge’s roof. Wild turkeys squawked. She had the strangest sense of being watched as she unlocked and opened the front door. A brown envelope was lying on the floor inside. Her heart gave a double thump. She lit an oil lamp, the better to see what she was doing, grimaced as she picked up the envelope. It had her name written in block capitals upon it. She tore it open, pulled out a colour photograph of her father and sister standing against a whitewashed wall, holding up an English-language newspaper. She turned it numbly over. Five hundred million ariary, someone had written. Independence Square, Tulear, 9 a.m., Monday. Tell the police and they die. Tell anyone and they die.