It was an astonishing thought. But the fact was she, not Leonard, nor any of the writers of her letters, she, Sylvie Morrow, was attracted to a man who was not her husband, and she was thinking of acting on it.

Downstairs, Leonard is asleep in his armchair. He is inside a dream.

It is dusk, and he is standing at the top of a street, a ten-gallon drum of oil beside him. He opens a tap in the lower portion of the drum, and oil slides out in a lovely sinuous stream. Like liquid onyx, he is thinking. But too fast, this stream is flowing too fast. He attaches a piece of rubber tubing to the tap, and by lowering and raising the makeshift hose he is able to moderate the flow. He wants a slow, lava-like stream to slide down the street; he wants the edges to be neat, and he wants to be safe. When the oil reaches the lowest point of the street, he adjusts the tubing to reduce the flow to a trickle. He takes a box of matches from his pocket and walks down the slope to the midway point. He strikes a match and lowers it to the oil. The fire shoots away in both directions. The stream is fabulously alight, a gorgeous orange-red-yellow-blue flickering over the slick surface. The fire travels up the slope, and circles the tubing at the barrel’s tap, it travels down to make a fiery pool at the bottom of the street.

Leonard gazes at his beautiful creation. ‘Lethal’ and ‘dangerous’ do not enter his mind. But the dreamer knows better. The dreamer tries to warn his dreaming self. The flames leap, at first in little skips and hops, and then in a wild dance. By the time Leonard recognises the danger, he is ringed by fire. The heat is tremendous, the smoke is suffocating. He’s unable to move, the fire is roaring. He calls for help.

Sylvie appears, she walks swiftly towards him. The flames don’t touch her, and she’s unaffected by the smoke. She soothes him with her words, she wraps him in her arms, she guides him to safety.

Her arms are around him when he wakes.

13 MANIFEST DESTINIES

13

MANIFEST DESTINIES

After the loveliest autumn, with mild days and crisp nights and trees ablaze with colour, winter had arrived. This was Galina’s second winter in Australia. Twelve months ago she was living with Zara and Arnold, she had not yet contacted Andrew, and she was dividing her work between real estate illustrations and sewing-pattern designs. Now she had a place of her own, she was, according to Sylvie, ‘a member of the extended Morrow family’, and she was about to have her first picture book published.