Behind me, Deal is dark. The town is sleeping, and the only lights come from the telephone kiosks. There’s a lot of them; there seems to be one kiosk on each street corner. They are so bright they hurt my eyes.

One of the phones is ringing. I drive soundlessly from one to the other; the ringing always seems to come from the next one, a street further on.

I drive through the town, my ears ringing, and when I get to the last kiosk I know it’s this one, I can hear the ringing quite clearly. I run in and lift the receiver.

Edward is on the line; I can hear him breathing.

‘Hello,’ I say.

Silence.

‘Hello?’ I raise my voice.

There’s no reply.

‘Edward?’ I say. ‘It’s me. Dad.’

Still no reply.

I open the door of the kiosk and stand out in the street, holding the receiver in my hand. I shout into the night: ‘I’ve got a son in here!’

There is a silence, then I hear a scratchy sound from the receiver. He is speaking.

I press it to my ear. It’s my son’s voice and he’s talking quite clearly. The trouble is, it’s gibberish. The words are all the wrong way round and I can’t understand what he’s saying.

‘Lousards,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Lousards. Alibaba numsquitchin.’

‘Hang on!’ I cry. ‘Say it again!’

But the line goes dead.

Twenty

Twenty

It was three in the morning when we drove into Deal. Hilda was dozing, to the final chorus of Oliver. It was a town of the dead. The only illuminations were the street lamps and the empty telephone kiosks. They waited on street corners. One of them was ringing, I was sure it was. I heard it. I would pick it up. All I had to say were two words: I’m here.

I drove along the seafront. It was a cold, moonlit night. The beach was empty; it was low tide and I saw the pallor of the sand. The moon, reflected, made the water look swollen and oily.

Hilda grunted and rearranged herself. The cassette clicked off. I cruised along the road, but in all the Bed and Breakfasts the windows were dark. Everybody had gone to bed, long before. There is nothing as desolate as an off-season seaside resort. I’d been here once before, with a party of OAPs, but that was in June and in daylight. They had sat on the beach with their stockings rolled down.

I had to put Hilda to bed. I drove around for a while and finally found a hotel, an expensive one with a colonnaded porch and AA stickers. Behind the door, a light glowed. I rang the bell and a porter shuffled up, muttering like someone in Shakespeare.

It was a twin-bedded room and Hilda settled in obediently. She sleep-walked in her pink nightie, and climbed between the sheets.