The storm was visible from the afternoon: over the far shore of the lake a dark wall had gathered, and it was coming towards us slowly, like a train.
The others set off back to the guesthouse. I stayed, because I did not want to go into the room yet, where all week only my own thoughts had been waiting for me.
Then the lightning came, and the rain began all at once — not a few drops first, not a gradual change, but the whole thing immediately.
The boathouse was open. I went in, and somebody was already standing there: a woman with wet hair, holding a folded newspaper over her head, pointlessly.
“Shut it,” she said. “In a moment the whole lake will come in.”
I shut it. Inside it was dark, light came only through the gap, and the rain drummed on the roof so hard that you could not speak quietly.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t usually give orders. I just got frightened.”
“Quite right too.”
We raised a lot of dust getting seated: two plastic chairs, an oar leaning against a fishing ladder, and the boats, which in the half-light looked like sleeping animals.
Her name was Illa. She had come with her friends, and they had quarrelled that morning.
“I don’t even know what about,” she said. “That’s the worst kind. When you don’t know what you quarrelled about, only that it hurts.”
“Then why didn’t you leave?”
“Because there’s nowhere to go. It’s their holiday house.”
Another flash cut across the lake, and the thunder came later, long, as if the hills were rolling it onwards.
“Why did you stay?” she asked.
“Because I came alone, and I didn’t want to admit I was bored.”
Illa laughed. It was the first laugh I had heard from her, and somehow, from that sound, the boathouse no longer seemed so dark.
We talked. Not much, but everything. About how summer is always shorter than what a person plans, and about how most people do not stay with someone because they love them, but because they do not know how to leave.
“That’s not true,” I said.
“No?”
“I stayed at the guesthouse because I love the morning. And because I didn’t want this week to pass without anything happening.”
Illa looked at me.
“Something has happened now.”
The rain slowed. On the roof it no longer drummed, only tapped, and then only dripped. The first light came through the gap, and the water began to steam.
I opened the door.
The lake was like a mirror: perfectly smooth, with the hills above it, still dark, but no longer threatening.
“How long are you staying?” I asked.
“Until the day after tomorrow.”
“Then let’s meet at the pier tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’ll bring coffee. I won’t ask whether you’re coming with your friends.”
Illa smiled.
“Don’t ask that.”
The next morning she came. Without her friends. Two days later we travelled back together, and on the train we looked out of the window the whole way, because it did not take talking for it to be good.
I do not know how long it lasted. Four summers.
But I will always remember that afternoon: the boathouse, the drumming rain, and the fact that the storm did not ruin the day. It began it.
