Another email, another link to another article, again about the caves, about the dark cells within the honeycomb of limestone, sacred places reserved for ritual purposes. Once I could have gone and seen them, but now they were closed; the breath of the present would obliterate the past. But there were more, the article said, inevitably more caves, more paintings, yet to be discovered.

The next contained another set of links—to a documentary by a famous German director, to articles that speculated about the role of the paintings in Paleolithic society, what they might have meant, beautiful speculations about rituals and hunting grounds and Ice Age star maps, description of great cathedrals under the earth, with wild beasts in the place of saints: bison, stags, ibex, deer, bears, and big cats. There was a basilica, an apse, a hall of bulls, a painting of an aurochs five meters high. Next, I received a link to a Flickr album, photographs of rivers and forests, ruined castles, gigantic limestone escarpments.

David. But why didn’t he speak to me? Because he was incapable of sticking to his word, because all of his promises were made to be broken? Enchantment, seduction, disillusionment. They were the stations and the train only went in one direction, and disillusionment was the end of the line, a final station at the foot of a mountain of impassable rock. But I kept looking.

Then, for a few days, there was nothing. And the fear I had, the fear of a return to the old paralysis, was replaced by terror that the emails would stop. I knew the panic well: the phone was ringing in my bag, the life-changing call from someone who would ring once and withhold their number.

Another email: A link to a map. A train station. A date. I wouldn’t go. I would. I wouldn’t. I deleted all the messages and went to the manor.

It was a warm day. The sky was thick with dense white clouds that trapped the heat. After I had signed him out, Darren and I walked around the grounds in silence. We paused before the fountain. Someone had scrubbed off the moss, but the cherubs were still there, still beckoning.

“Peter told me what happened with Joe. Where is he? Where did you put him?” But Darren only mumbled something about an invoice.

It was entirely possible that Mortimer’s diamonds were still here. Faintly, as though from very far away, I thought I heard their call. Perhaps the price of some things staying buried was that there were others you would search for and never find.

When it came time for me to leave, I kissed Darren’s cheek, and he smiled, a sweet vacuous smile, the kind a toddler gives to its mother.