Epilogue
In the winter the sea beats steadily against the low wall containing it, threatening to spill over and up onto the beach and invade the houses that line the shore. The waves are higher and stronger at this time of year and remind me of another part of the world where such activity would be "tame", to use Ivo's word. The wind rattles the aging shutters and shingles and the old house groans and creaks in protest. We have central heating now, afforded by a professor's steady salary, but I light the fire anyway. Its cheerful lights and crackling are a panacea to the winter blues that plague me and I imagine the sprites race from it to chase the menacing spirits away.
I feel him most especially at these times, when the sea is restless and the wind wild. I imagine he is watching me from somewhere out there, waiting for his moment. Once, late at night, I heard frantic scratching on the window and imagined that he had come, like Cathy Earnshaw clawing her way back from the grave. I lay completely still, frozen in time and space, waiting for him to speak my name.
But he never did.
Ivo would say my imagination is running away with me again and I should be reading New Scientist not Wuthering Heights and maybe he is right. The mind does play tricks.
As do people.
Still, I remember him so clearly, just as if I had known him, just as if he was there beside me. I wonder how he must feel now – shut away, forgotten at the bottom of a box. I want to say to Ivo, all he ever wanted was to be remembered. But Ivo wouldn't permit it. Ivo doesn't bleed, he amputates.
Only with me did he ever bleed.
I wonder if Danny is jealous of me?
I walk to the window and stare out at the blackness. Anything could be out there, between the house and the sea. The wind howls and the sea rages and I believe it. Devoutly.
Anything can be there in the black where you can't see.
Perhaps Danny is out there, desperate for a way back, a way in to our lives. Perhaps that cry in the wind is his, begging for shelter.
I open the kitchen door and leave it until I call Ivo for dinner.
Just in case…