The Last Refuge by Craig Robertson

from it. I needed out, away from the Scots. These guys always trawled nets behind them and could catch fish even when they didn’t know they were looking for it.
    Most of them were in a clump near the front door, but a couple had spread out in search of local talent, spreading their charms in a way that only those who have swallowed their self-awareness can.
    One of them, a lanky type with close-cropped dark hair, was at the door at the far end of the pub, drooling over a local girl with long blonde hair. She was laughing at or with him – either was enough encouragement for him to continue. The guy had positioned himself as close to her table as he could, but with another table behind, there was no way past without going right through him.
    Cafe Natur suddenly seemed smaller than it had ever done before. The walls were closing in on me, noise tumbling over movement, the narrow corridor teeming with threat. I had to get out of there, but the very process of doing that offered me up as someone to be seen. Someone to be recognized. Scots were the last people I wanted to see or be seen by.
    The bearded guy in the red jumper was looking at me again, curiosity knotting his eyebrows as some cogent thought struggled to be heard among the swill of booze in his head. He was trying to join some dots in his addled brain and I knew it couldn’t be a good thing for me.
    I turned away from him to find something interesting behind the bar, making myself count the beer taps and then the bottles on the shelves. If he couldn’t see my face then there was much less chance that he’d work out where he might have seen it. And if he couldn’t do that, then hopefully he’d just shrug his shoulders and give it up. Pinning my hopes on the logic of a drunk was like hoping for sunshine on a Torshavn weekend.
    The biggest thing I had going for me was that he hadn’t heard me speak and so had no reason to think I was Scottish. Maybe that was enough to keep him from making the connection. Why would he think he might recognize some Faroese guy sitting in a bar? All I had to do was not talk, and hide my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Karis looking at me oddly. She must have wondered why I was taking so much interest in the fixtures and fittings of the Natur bar. I was staring at them like a drunk in the desert, eyeing up a mirage of booze. Shit, was she going to come over and talk to me? Any other time I might have welcomed it, crazy as she was, but not now. The last thing I needed was her to call me ‘Scotsman’ or say anything that meant I would have to answer out loud. I focused back fully on the beer taps and threw my last scrap of hope at the wall.
    She was to my left, while the Bearded Wonder was behind me. The lanky guy was guarding one door and another four or five were near the other. I was surrounded by threats and my own paranoia. Stick or twist, stay or try to leave?
    As I watched, the bearded man’s eyebrows rose in surprise and his mouth fell open in a round O of disbelief. His hands gripped the side of his chair and he began to push himself to his feet. I turned to my left and saw Karis staring back at me, clearly aware of the growing panic that must have been stitched across my face. Even if I got up and marched straight past her, the lanky guy was still on duty at the far door, and he was taking up even more room than he had before.
    I could feel it building inside. A familiar feeling coloured in reds and blacks, an anger fathered by anxiety. My hands balled into fists and my breathing quickened. I didn’t know where it was going, but I knew it was spilling out and I had no control of it. I had to get out of there – it was as if I was claustrophobic, and maybe I was. The walls and the people and the talking and the laughter were like a straightjacket that was winding itself ever tighter round me.
    I turned back to the bearded guy, seeing him advance on me through the crowd. He clearly had something he wanted to