Storm at the Lighthouse

By the second morning the fog had cleared, but the sea had not. Gale warnings crackled over the radio and the waves smashed white against the rocks below the tower. There was no question of Erik taking his little boat back to the mainland.

They settled into an odd domestic rhythm. He fixed the dripping tap in the kitchen and the broken hinge on the generator shed. She cooked. He read her books. She read his face when he thought she wasn't looking.

He had been married once, he told her. His wife had moved to the city many years ago, and he did not blame her; the coast was a hard place to love. Astrid told him about the man in Oslo, and the flat, and the reasons she had come to an island at the edge of the world. She had never told anyone the whole story before.

On the third night the storm hit in earnest. The tower shuddered. Rain lashed the windows so hard it sounded like gravel. At midnight the mains failed and the generator stuttered into life below them, and the lamp kept turning, sweeping its beam out across the black and furious sea.

They sat together on the narrow bed in the keeper's room because it was the warmest place in the tower, wrapped in blankets, watching the beam sweep past the window. Every few seconds it lit his face, then left it in darkness.

'Astrid,' he said, the next time it passed.

She did not answer. She reached for him in the dark, and the next time the light swept through the room, it found them in each other's arms.