‘Everyone’s looking for the light, aren’t they?’ Elise said. ‘As if, once they’ve been illuminated in its radiance, they are finally going to have the answers.’

‘I don’t know much,’ I said. ‘But I do know this: there are no real answers.’

‘Not to you or me. But for those who think they’ve found the light there’s … the glow of certitude. Which makes so many of us so wary of the glow they possess.’

‘Because their answers are not our own?’

‘Maybe because answers are usually not very flexible thoughts. If history teaches us anything it’s this: people who say they have seen the light are often leading the rest of us into darkness.’

We said nothing more until we were back in front of the trailer. I was going to come inside, see how Klara and Amber were doing. But the lights were already out.

‘You sleep until you wake up tomorrow,’ Elise told me.

‘How are you going to sleep?’

‘Badly. But at least by being in the trailer I will feel that I am somehow watching over the two girls.’

‘I should be with you.’

‘Get out of here now,’ she said.

Once back in the motel room I stripped off my clothes. I took a very long, hot shower. I drank the two beers. I watched some late-night talk show. I got into bed. Sleep arrived in seconds.

Then it was morning. Late morning. 11.08 a.m. by the bedside digital clock. I sat up immediately, wanting to know how the night had passed at the trailer. I reached for my phone, thinking: if something urgent had come up Klara would probably have risked sending me a text. Even if there was a trace on my phone I was so far away from the trailer as to not let ‘them’ know our whereabouts. And I hadn’t checked messages in a day. And …

I turned the phone on. Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing. Five messages from someone I never hear from: Grazyna Pawlikowski. My wife’s youngest sister. All containing one word: urgent. The last one reading:

Where are you, Brendan? It is essential that you contact me now. Anytime day or night.

Immediately I hit the redial number. Grazyna answered after one ring.

‘Brendan,’ she said, sounding beyond troubled, ‘where have you been? I have been texting, calling nonstop.’

I ignored the question. I asked:

‘What’s happened?’

‘I have some terrible news. Agnieska had an embolism last night. It caused cardiac arrest. I’m afraid the doctors think she might not make it through the day.’

twenty

GUILT. IT EATS the soul. It makes you believe that you are irredeemable; that – as the Church kept telling us when we were young and ready to believe their stuff – life is an endless hardship. With the big payoff coming when you die – but only if you’ve played by their rules while you were walking around.