Tate glanced at Kearney, then at his own shoulder. He didn’t seem to see the white cat perched there, purring and kneading the material of his coat. He shook his head.

“No,” he said abjectly. “She’s gone now.”

Anna stared at Tate, then the cat, then Tate again.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’ll call a taxi, if no one minds.”

“You can’t call from in here,” Tate told her, as if he was talking to a child. “It’s a cage.” Then he whispered, “I had no idea Beth felt so badly about things.”

Kearney touched his arm.

“Why do you need the cage, Brian? What really happened?”

Tate began to cry. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Why do you need the cage?” Kearney persisted. He made Tate face him. “Are you afraid something will get in?”

Tate wiped at his eyes. “No, I’m frightened it will get out,” he said. He shivered and made a curious half-turn away from Kearney, raising his hand to zip the neck of the parka; this brought him face to face with Anna. He jerked in a startled way, as if he had forgotten she was there. “I’m cold,” he whispered. He felt around behind him with one hand, pulled the chair out from behind the table and sat down heavily. All the time the white cat rode on his shoulder, shifting its balance fluently, purring. Tate looked up at Kearney from the chair and said:

“I’m always cold.”

He was silent for a moment, then he said: “I’m not really here. None of us are.”

Tears rolled down the dark grooves around his mouth.

“Michael, we’re none of us here at all.”

Kearney stepped forward quickly and, before Tate could react, pulled back the hood of the parka. Fluorescent light fell mercilessly across Tate’s face, stubbled, exhausted, old-looking, and with an abraded appearance about the eyes, as if he had been working without spectacles, or crying all night. Probably, Kearney thought, he had been doing both. The eyes themselves were watery, a little bloodshot, with pale blue irises. Nothing was odd about them in the end except the tears pouring in a silvery stream from their inner corners. There were too many of them for Tate’s grief. Every tear was made up of exactly similar tears, and those tears too were made from tears. In every tear there was a tiny image. However far back you went, Kearney knew, it would always be there. At first he supposed it was his own reflection. When he saw what it really was he grabbed Anna by the upper arm and started dragging her out of the room. She struggled and fought all the way, hitting out at him with her luggage, staring back in horror at what was happening to Brian Tate.

“No,” she said reasonably. “No. Look. We have to help him.”

“Christ, Anna! Come on!”