Lighthouse by Alison Moore Read Free Book Online

moth.
    He puts his rucksack on his back and begins to leave the room but, having lost out on breakfast, does not make it past the coffee-making facilities. He fills the kettle from the bathroom tap and, while he is waiting for the kettle to boil, empties the sachet of coffee granules and the little pot of UHT milk into a cup. He thinks about Carl’s mother, about the breakfast she might have made for Carl, with cafetiere coffee and home baking. He wonders if he might have made a mistake.
    The kettle boils. He fills up his cup and brings his coffee briefly to his lips, testing its heat, before setting it down on the windowsill to cool. He puts the packet of complimentary biscuits in his pocket and then idly checks inside the drawers and the wardrobe. He does not recall putting anything in them – he has not unpacked – but, he thinks, he always manages to leave something behind. Invariably, he overlooks a coat still hanging in a wardrobe, his passport at the back of a drawer or in the pocket of the coat in the wardrobe, pyjamas tangled up in the bedding, something plugged into the wall, or a toothbrush, countless toothbrushes, although they are easy to replace.
    Getting down on his knees, he looks under the bed, just in case he has lost anything under there. There is something unidentifiable right in the middle. He reaches under and fishes it out. It is soft, some small piece of balled-up clothing, covered in dust and fluff and stray pillow feathers. Standing, shaking out and dusting off and looking at what he has retrieved, he finds in his hand a pair of knickers. He wonders how long they have been there.
    Remembering his coffee, he turns back to the window and picks up his cup. While he drinks, he watches the few people now passing in the street below. He thinks about all the dust which he has just shaken from the knickers now being in the air which he is breathing, and most of that dust, he thinks, is strangers’ dead skin.
    He finishes his coffee, puts the empty cup back by the kettle and leaves the room.
    In the lift, he realises that he is still holding the knickers. They are clenched in his closed hand, slivers of pink satin showing between his fingers. He does not know what to do with them, who to give them to. Entering the bar, he hesitates before putting them down – very carefully, as if they were fragile – on the landlady’s check-in desk, next to her ledger. Embarrassed, glancing around, he finds himself observed by the barman who refused him breakfast.
    Futh, making his way to the door to the street and stepping out into the sunshine, is aware of the barman watching him go.
    The east-facing frontage of the hotel is bathed in sunlight. Walking away, turning back to see, he has to squint, it is so bright.
     
    He walks alongside the Rhine to the ferry point. Waiting on the slip for the boat to come across from the far side, he takes his packet of biscuits out of his pocket and eats one. He is bewildered by the lack of breakfast, and by the man behind the bar who said, ‘You should go.’
    The little ferry arrives and Futh embarks. He leans against the side and eats the other biscuit, gazing back at Hellhaus and its backdrop of green hills and rocky outcrops.
    The boat pulls away from the shore and the broad, grey-green river flows fast around and beneath it.
    Futh, who is wearing shorts for the first time in years, takes the sun cream out of his rucksack and applies it to the exposed parts of his white legs, his forearms, the small triangle of bare chest where he has left his top two buttons undone. The crossing is short and he has barely finished rubbing the cream into the back of his neck before they reach the other side.
    Futh sets off, following his printed directions, walking briskly, relishing the exercise, the doing of something physical, enjoying the clean, fresh air and the sound of twigs cracking beneath his feet. He follows his route along the river, which curves initially towards the west. He