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is sixteen when she first sees Hank. He’s shouting at someone driving the Frog onto land, signaling that they need to wait for a pair of gentoos who are waddling across their path. He is the new team leader of the base, here to spend a few weeks in handover with Carol. is sad to see Carol go—Carol taught her how to cut open the giant kelp and cook fish inside. None of them know what to expect from the new guy, but likes that he is concerned for the penguins.

She doesn’t have anything to do with Hank until a few months later. He has offered to give the three kids a lesson on the island’s botanicals, which Dom thinks is a great idea—they can use it as part of their coursework. and her brothers head down the hill to meet Hank the next time he’s going south to the vault, and as they speed along in the Zodiac he tells them in his New York accent (so he says, she wouldn’t have a clue) about the seeds he has been tasked to look after. He explains about the importance of the vault, he talks about the dangers in the world that may give these seeds value, he says that some have already been used. He speaks of seed banks back on land and how so many have been lost over the years, he tells them how some plants don’t have seeds or seeds that don’t survive the freezing process, so scientists have taken to culturing their tissues and cloning them as a method of reproduction. He talks of biodiversity and the interconnectedness of all living things. He says his favorite seeds are from a type of orchid, and then he shows them these seeds, which are so small they are practically invisible, and says that the only way to collect them is to let them fall onto a type of fungus and collect this instead.

is aware, after a few lessons like this, that she is developing a crush on him. She has been raised by a man so reticent his silences can last days. So all of Hank’s talking, all of these conversations—they are a revelation to her. It is actually possible to know what someone is thinking, it is actually possible for them to tell you! It makes her feel grown-up, to know someone like this. He’s smart and passionate, and he’s funny too. Plus there aren’t many choices on this island for people to fantasize about, and the fantasies come without her permission, anyway. One day he is just an adult she doesn’t know, like any other, the next he is filling her thoughts.

Time passes and enjoys these fantasies. They give her something to do. She would be bored without them. Never, in any of her wildest imaginings, does she think anything will happen between them. And, if she is honest with herself, never has she wanted anything to happen. The fun of the crush is that it exists in her mind. That it is her secret. And that she is safe from it.

is seventeen by the time Hank’s new orders are given. They will both be staying on for another three months and then heading off island for good. Something in him shifts at this point. She can feel the nature of his interest in her changing. Everything about him takes on an urgent quality, a sort of frenzied abandon.

When he says he’s noticed her watching him, she flushes, she feels caught. When he says he knows she likes him, that he can feel her attraction, she realizes she has done this to herself, that it’s her fault. She tells herself it’s what she wants. She’s old enough, it’s legal, he says, and anyway they’re leaving soon. Actually, his exact words are “It will all be over soon.”

It’s not at all like how she imagined it. Still, she is flattered he wants her. She can’t believe her luck, to have been chosen.

She’s not aware of a wife.

It is crucial that her dad never know.

Each month dreads her period; she marks its impending arrival on the calendar so she can be prepared for the pain of it. Which means she is aware of this day passing her by. At only one day late, she becomes convinced. She spirals. Panicking, thinking through every implication. The worst part of this is that her dad will have to be told, because he will need to take her off island so she can get an abortion.

spends a couple of hours wallowing in the misery of it, in the fear of what will happen to her body if she doesn’t get this dealt with immediately. There is an immense urgency in her. (And deeper, a sadness that could swallow her whole, if she allows it to.)

What if… Could she keep it? Children shouldn’t have children and she has no mum to show her how to do it, but she has the best dad in the world, and she has pretty much raised a baby already herself… Her family would help her, she knows they would. But doesn’t think the question is whether she’d be capable, but whether it’s what she wants, if it’s what she’s ready for, and it’s not, not yet. One day, but not this day, and not with this man.

As the hours pass, she pulls herself together. She is very good at calm. She comes up with a plan. Hank will help her, he has to, he loves her.

When arrives at the vault to tell him, he seems weird. He’s been pretty weird for weeks now, but today he is opening containers and pulling out seed packets and dumping them in a pile on the floor. All his meticulous categorizing out the window.

Where are the others? Tom and Naija and Alex? Why aren’t they stopping him from doing whatever this is?

“What are you doing?” she asks.

He doesn’t look at her, just carries on with his work. “It’s the end of it all.”

“What is?”

“They don’t get to tell me to drown half. That is not something any bureaucracy gets to decide on.”

“So then don’t,” says. “Just tell them you won’t do it.”

“If I refuse, they’ll send someone else down here.”

“Okay, so what…?”

“Don’t worry about it, kid.”

He is enraged, she realizes. This is not a good time to tell him what she suspects. But he turns to her and levels that look on her, and it seems to say why have you bothered me , and she gets flustered, wanting something important to justify her presence here. So she blurts it out. I think I’m pregnant.

At first he doesn’t react. Hank is calm as he leads her out of the vault. They walk in silence to the blue field hut.

“Where are the others?” she asks.

“Up at the base.”

Her stomach sinks. Something feels so off. He’s not looking at her. He is watching the ocean. “You know what’s hilarious?” he asks. “My wife was right.”

It takes a moment for that word to sink in. Wife. And now she can hardly concentrate on what he’s saying.

“I’ve always wanted children but she kept saying it was wrong. Bad for the world, bad for the kids. I thought it was just an excuse but she was so fucking right. This world is a dumpster fire.”

is dissolving. He has a wife. This is bad. This is way worse than she realized. She is a party to something cruel.

“I’ve figured out how to solve the problem,” Hank rambles on (he is always rambling on, how has she abided this?). “You know Orly’s wind voices?” he asks her. “I thought he was really screwed up.” Hank laughs bitterly. “I was the one who didn’t have a clue. This place is full of them.”

“Of who?”

“Of the dead.”

She is staring at him and her skin is crawling. He’s always joked about how stupid her superstition is.

“I think this is where things come to die,” Hank says.

“I’m gonna walk home. I’ll see you later.”

“.”

She pauses, though she very much doesn’t want to.

“I figured out what has to happen. It’s impossible to choose. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“So I won’t. Nobody will. They will all drown. Every one of them, and every one of us, and then everything will start again.”

She doesn’t know what he’s talking about and she doesn’t care, she just wants to get back to her family. But he pulls her in for a hug. As he holds her he says, “I’m so sorry this happened. It’s my fault and I’ll pay for it in the end, I’ll pay for it all.” Then he pulls her down into the seawater and shoves her head under the surface.

First there is shock. There is disbelief. But she is strong, and she has very good lungs. Her brothers and father like to say she was born for the water and maybe that’s true, she is certainly at home beneath its surface. So if he thinks this is how to kill her? He is mistaken.

The secret is simple: you have to know how to stay calm. Panic—even a slightly raised pulse—is your enemy. Even when the pressure comes, even with the pain. lets her mind go blank and her body go limp. She plays dead. The seconds tick past but she doesn’t move, doesn’t panic. Finally his grip on her head loosens a fraction and she uses the moment to twist out of his hold. Instead of surging up beside him she kicks out underwater, swimming as far into the sea as she can. She is not frightened of the burn in her lungs, she knows it well because she is always pushing to its edge, always wanting just that little longer beneath. Even so, she is all too human.

Her head bobs out of the water like one of the seals. She sees him in the shallows, waves crashing against his knees.

“!” he shouts.

He won’t come after her, not while she’s in the ocean—he’s got no chance of outswimming her, and anyway there are people running down the hill toward them. It’s Raff and Alex. She wonders how much they saw.

watches her brother, who is a lot bigger than Hank, tackle the older man to the ground. Together, he and Alex drag Hank into the field hut. She watches that door; she isn’t coming out of the sea until she knows it’s safe. Alex returns and waves her in, but she doesn’t move, she treads water, watching him. He comes down to the shoreline and shouts to her. “Are you okay?”

She says nothing.

“Your dad’s on his way, okay?” he calls. “And Raff’s watching Hank. You can come out.”

But she can’t. She won’t. She starts to shiver, her teeth chattering. She will have to move soon, she doesn’t have her wetsuit, she might be in shock.

“, baby,” Alex calls. “Please come out. It’s too cold.”

In the end it’s Raff who wades into the water and pulls her bodily to shore. “Why did he do that to you?” he is asking. “Why was he doing that, ?” But she can’t talk.

That was a man who said he loved her. She does not understand.

Alex has blankets and they wrap them around her, and Raff keeps holding her, but she is staring fixedly at the door to the hut in case he comes back out, someone has to watch that door, she can’t even blink, don’t they understand he could come back out.

Eventually her dad speeds down the coast to the rocks. There is no beach here, but he doesn’t care, he turns off the Zodiac and jumps into the water, climbing to where they sit.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and he is looking at her and it feels like he is seeing everything. She is so ashamed.

“Hank was trying to drown her,” Raff says, and he sounds bewildered. He sounds like he too is in shock.

Dominic looks at her but still she can’t talk, her jaw is locked, and she can’t take her eyes from the door.

“We were coming down the hill and they were talking by the water,” Alex is explaining, “and we saw them hug, and then he was just, I don’t know, holding her head under water.”

It is so bizarre, so unbelievable, that they all stare at each other.

When nods, confirming it, something falls over Dominic, a cold, mechanical kind of certainty that is utterly unlike the ranting anger Hank displayed, no, this is something other, and should be terrified, but instead she is glad. She watches her father go into that field hut, and she knows something bad is about to happen, but what she discovers is that she hates Hank with purity and completeness, and she is grateful for her dad’s size and his fists, which she has never understood until now. She knows what the fists are for now, she knows why someone might need to punch a bag over and over.

She is able to look away from the door at last.

won’t ever ask what happened inside, but it is obvious that Dominic has nearly killed Hank in that little kitchen. It is only Raff, with strength that almost rivals his father’s, who manages to wrestle Dom away before it’s too late.

Tom, Alex, and Raff get Hank to the hospital on the base. Naija will treat him. Dom takes home to the lighthouse, where they sit at the kitchen table and talk.

When she explains that she and Hank have been in a relationship of sorts for about a month, she sees the horror that falls over him and she will never be able to unsee it. She knows exactly what he perceives her as now. Damaged. Broken.

He asks, “Has he ever forced you?”

“No.”

“Has he ever hurt you, before this?”

“No. He’s not himself,” she tells him. “He wants to drown all the seeds. So that no one can ever make the choice. I saw it in his eyes—he won’t stop until he’s drowned them all.”

She gets her period two days later.