Niz, he thought suddenly, rubbing his beard. That didn’t mean “nothing.” Not in any language. And why would you put “43” next to it?

Something stirred. He remembered the book of Qabbani poetry they had had in their little apartment in Damascus. Of course he did not have it now, but the internet could be a wonderful thing. He downloaded the first edition he could find, stumbled to the page he thought would be nearest to page 43 in the original text.

And, suddenly, there it was. One stanza, all alone:

Because my love for you is higher than words, I have decided to fall silent.

He started. And stared. For a long time.

He wrote a note asking if it was her and sent it.

Nothing.

The next day, he tried something else and sent a poem. Then a code.

Still, he received no reply.

Finally, in absolute desperation, he wrote to her straight out, begging and asking her when she could come and what she would do.

The next time he opened his computer, with trembling fingers, the account had gone, vanished forever, and it didn’t matter how many times he logged on, how long he lay awake torturing himself, wondering if perhaps it had indeed been a mistake—that he had been replying to spam, to some bot; that it was all a coincidence and nothing more.

Chapter 36

T he papers were still bad; their social media was still a mess and everyone was looking at them suspiciously. But to the kitchen’s surprise, the following day the storm had broken, and Gaspard turned up in a ridiculously mellow mood that nobody understood in the slightest (although no one was complaining).

It was as if the previous day hadn’t happened. The phone was still off the hook, but the fight had gone out of Gaspard completely, and there was music playing (back to terrible pop rock) once again in the kitchen. The clouds had abated, and the sun peeked through the back windows, as Bjårk happily bounced around the lawn.

Gaspard had decided to line everyone up and teach them how to make poached eggs, due to a surfeit in the coop.

“And queek and smash and in and whoop with the wrist!” Gaspard was hollering.

Isla had absolutely no trouble poaching an egg. Konstantin, on the other hand, was having a terrible time, as his big pan of water bubbled up and over. He hadn’t, as it turned out, ever even cracked an egg in his life, something else—there seemed to be a lot of things—that completely horrified the people around him. Well, in his world he was completely horrified that they’d never attended a state banquet, so there, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he felt like bringing up.

Even as Gaspard called him a left-handed moron who couldn’t kiss a pig, or rolled his eyes again at his ineptitude as he wasted yet another egg, there was a distinct and definite fact: since Konstantin had arrived, he’d actually learned quite a lot. Not just chopping and pot washing, although both of which were new skills. But he’d had to launder his own clothes, keep his room tidy, and look after Bjårk, who normally got taken out by the palace staff once or twice a day so Konstantin didn’t have to do all the more tedious bits of dog ownership like picking up poo. Now everything was on him.