“It’s not at all funny!” shouted Fintan back, cross with himself. “You think I wanted this shit to happen?” He kicked furiously at the dancing sand around his shoes. “You think I wanted any of this shit to happen? None of this! I didn’t want any of this! I don’t want any of this.”

Both of them at this time were panting from the exertion of shouting over the pouring rain and howling gale and crashing waves on the shore of the Endless Beach.

“I don’t want any of this.”

“Any of this?” echoed Gaspard suddenly, a taut, strained look on his face, his wiry body long and braced against the wind.

And the next second they were kissing fiercely, passionately, the turmoil of the storm’s hysteria reflecting their own.

Chapter 35

S aif Hussein was hurriedly eating a sandwich in his office. It was a miserable day, and he’d promised to make house calls rather than risk his older patients catching pneumonia marching over the ben to his surgery. Nevertheless, he checked his Facebook, as usual. He was not a social media user. He did not post pictures or forward inspirational memes or like other people’s pictures of their dogs. He was simply there in case.

It was ritualistic now, just going through the motions. He had his old Syrian mobile number, still paid up and available, connected to his dusty, ridiculous, old, outdated BlackBerry. It never rang. And he still had his Facebook account, with a picture of him and Amena on their wedding day as his profile pic and nothing else. He had absolutely no idea how to source the information as to how many times his profile had been viewed, which was lucky, as Lorna had clicked on and stared at that photo more times than she would ever have admitted to anyone under torture.

Today, there was something. From someone he did not know. In Arabic. That was nothing particularly unusual.

Of course it could be anything. A scam. Someone trying to rip him off, either personally or automatically: there were people who targeted clearly Arabic names in Western countries, making promises about finding relatives or tracking down bank accounts or moving money or all sorts of nefarious things. It could be any of those.

But there was something about this one, though.

Or it could be something else. The avatar of the sender was the little Saudi Arabian Temsa7LY puppet crocodile. Well, he was quite a famous crocodile. Anyone could have one of those.

But also: the favorite video of the boys when they were little. Their very favorite thing.

With shaking hands, Saif clicked on the message. His heart fell. Yup, just more spam, like it always was. GET BEST PRICE! it said. EVERYTHING HEART DESIRE PAGE! FOR NOTHING! NIZ!!! 43!!!!!

That was all. Saif looked at it. Just flotsam, floating through the internet, looking to snag the unwary—nothing out of order. The same as any other day.

But it felt different. It felt different.