The lighthouse, on its small rocky island in the middle of the bay, was always her subject, never wildlife or people. She had often wanted to swim out to it; visualised each stroke, each breath and each kick. For fear of witnessing what lurked below, she wondered if she would swim with her eyes closed or with her head out of the water. She shuddered as the panic of a two-note progression of a tuber rasped in her mind, sound that always accompanied her whenever danger loomed, slowly gaining tempo as the vision of a dark mass with menacing rows of razor teeth raced towards her, then erupting in a speckled clamour of a French horn. At that point, with her eyes closed and heart racing, she abandoned that fantasy. But she never stopped wanting to feel the thrill of the accomplishment of racing across the water and pulling herself out of the icy cold and sit on those barnacled rocks, under that lighthouse and look back towards land where she sat now. She had always wanted that.
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