A sensation enflames his chest and everything in him is trembling. He is coming apart. A bitter liquid surges from his throat and leaks down his chin. This is what he will choke on. This is the stuff that will kill him, these few morsels. There is no pain, only joy. It is so good to have lived; to have spent so little time alone in a life so full of other people; to have been alive. Ecstasy runs through his blood, every part of him is full of light. He is glowing, and can see, coming out of nothingness, a pink shining like illuminated blood, and then something is wrapped round him. It is sore. The pain of her touch on his body is hot, terrible. His ecstasy disintegrates; only pain remains, but it has no centre; it is everything.

‘I will never leave you,’ she whispers in his ear. ‘Never. I swear it.’

She squeezes him tight; her burning cheek presses against his. Her tears are poison on his skin, burning holes through him. If he could scream, he would.

‘You belong to me,’ she says. ‘You are mine.’

She will miss him forever.

‘Is this village …

‘Is this village empty?’ Harold asks. ‘There is much quietness and disrepair.’

‘Not disrepair,’ Ambrosio remarks, ‘age. This place is old. The village, actually, is quite full, but the people will not stir forth from their residences for fear of disease, and the sun is heavy, as your rosy cheeks do bear witness to.’

‘Such a quiet place, so evil in its quietness; quite the opposite of life, I find,’ Harold says.

Ambrosio’s jaw falls open, and he shakes his head. ‘We are not in life’s opposite, serving-man,’ he says, ‘we are in its very essence.’

‘Excuse, once again, this fool I carry, this millstone round my neck,’ de Flunkl says to Ambrosio. ‘On witnesses, by the by, can you call forth some to any affairs we might share in this room?’

Ambrosio hands de Flunkl his own mug of rosewater, its edge caked with yellowish grime. Glancing into the mug, de Flunkl sees that amongst the petals, a fly swims within a wall of shade.

‘We have several witnesses,’ Ambrosio says. ‘Your sallow-faced friend who we shall call back. The tempestuous skinny, tall one with the midlands accent, I forget his name. That bearish, shaken fellow in the corner’ – he nods his head at Harold. ‘My lubricated wife; the retarded child you left outside, and there is a good fellow called Colca; reliable and gentle, who will be joining me soon. I don’t know what is happening that he is not here already. I should probably fetch him.’

‘Quite a little crowd,’ Harold says, ‘especially given the room is already so crowded with corpses.’