Page 14 of The Man Made of Smoke

It was a cold evening, but she was wearing a bikini top and jeans, dancing barefoot at the side of the fire with a few other people. She was drunk and carefree, and she seemed sohappy. The sight of her unraveled me. Everyone looks beautiful by firelight, of course, but she transcended that, and in that moment I knew that I loved her.

The loss ached inside me. There were so many things I could have said and done over the last few years. But my feelings for her were bound up in the horror of my encounter with the Pied Piper at the rest area. It hadbecome impossible to look at her without reliving the fear and shame and guilt I’d felt that day. Safer not to look at all.

But it meant I’d missed so much.

So stand up, I thought.

I looked down at the book in my hands.

Put this stupid fucking thing on the fire and go and talk to her.

But I didn’t. I just watched her dance, throwing her head back and laughing, the warm light of the fire playing across her face. The book had gone home with me at the end of the night, a weight in my coat pocket that it seemed I wasn’t yet ready to leave behind. And as I lay in bed, I told myself that it was enough to know she was escaping from the island. That her life would be a good one, and better for not having someone like me in it.

Here I am.

Back where I fucking started.

“Not forever,” I said.

“Yeah, we’ll see.”

I turned my bottle slowly on the table. Considering.

“I saw Liam earlier. He said you two are together now.”

She grimaced.

“He told you that?”

“It’s not true?”

“It’s complicated.” She put her drink down. “I mean, honestly.Complicated.If I was on Facebook, that would have been my relationship status for the last twenty years. But yeah, Liam and I were together for a while.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t judge me, Dan.” She gave me a pointed look. “Your options are pretty limited here on the island. And he does have some good qualities.”

“I’m not judging you at all.”

“But things are a little more… shall we saynebulousthese days?” She sighed. “Look: can we leave it at that? I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Of course.”

And I had no intention of probing further. But I couldn’t help my mind going back to the conversation I’d had with Fleming earlier. He’d made a point of mentioning his relationship with Sarah to me, and he hadn’t made it soundcomplicatedornebulousat all.

I wondered why. Did he see me as some kind of threat? That seemed ridiculous, given the reason I was back here, but I was also aware that he was the kind of man who viewed life in terms of dominance and territory. And in my experience, the weaker that type of man had a grip on what they thought was theirs, the more they felt a need to tighten it.

“I—”

But whatever I might have been about to say was interrupted by a sudden commotion by the door. I looked down the bar to see a large group of young men stumbling in, arms around each other. Already drunk; already rowdy.

Sarah slapped the table decisively.

“Ah,” she said. “The evening begins. I’d better get back to the bar.”

“Of course.”

My drink was nearly finished, and things were clearly about to get lively, so I figured it was probably time for me to leave too. But as Sarah stood up, I found myself thinking about the questions that had bothered me back at my father’s house.

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