I look at Iris and nod. Did she say something? “And?”

“And what?” I ask.

“I just presumed you would say he’s too young for me.”

“Who?”

“The waiter.”

“You mean Jacques?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t just call him a waiter. I mean, he’s also the bartender.”

“And the chef,” says Iris. “And the porter,” I say.

“And the receptionist,” adds Iris.

“Oh, and he’s the night manager too,” I say, remembering.

“And the purveyor of garden furniture, don’t let’s forget,” says Iris.

“Wow,” I say. “Men can multitask.”

“They just pretend they can’t so we do everything,” Iris says.

“Ye cads!” I yell, which strikes me as the right sort of vocabulary to employ in a castle-type setting. My voice echoes about the garden, bringing a lilting music to the words and giving them a sort of majesty.

“Sssshhhh,” Iris says. She holds out her hand. “Give me a hand up, would you?”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“To have sex with Jacques, like I said.”

“What?”

“I knew you weren’t listening to me.”

“Does Jacques know?”

“He does.”

“Oh.”

“I’d suggest a threesome, but he’s too gorgeous to share.”

I have to agree. I get on the grass, arrange myself on all fours. Crawl over to her. “Use me like a table and pull yourself up.” Which she does.

“Do you want the last drag?” she asks.

I nod.

“Even though it’s a gateway drug?” she says, handing it to me.

That makes me laugh.

She grins and arranges herself onto her sticks. “Cheerio,” she says, and the word sounds so quaint and so...odd all of a sudden. Cheerio. Cheerio. Cheerio. I stand up and laugh again. Iris looks worried. “You won’t fall off anything, will you?” she says.

“Like what?” I say.

“I don’t know. A turret or something.”

“You’re mammying me.”

“I know, it’s strange, isn’t it?”

“Go on, go and have some sex,” I say.

“Now you’re freaking me out,” says Iris. I can’t blame her I suppose. I’m supposed to say something about his being too young for her. I’m supposed to ask about protection. I’m supposed to use my fingers to number the number of reasons why Iris should go straight to bed and not knock on a stranger’s door in a strange castle in the middle of a strange night and initiate sex which won’t be strange but, knowing Iris, will most likely be of the adventurous sort. “See you in the morning,” Iris says, striding away on her sticks, like she doesn’t need them at all. Like they are just for show. The crunch of the rubbery ends of the crutches against the gravel fades and fades as Iris disappears around the stone wall that separates this secret garden from the castle.

And now I am alone. In the dark, by myself, in a foreign country.

Oddly, I do not feel afraid. Instead, I feel...aroused.

I sit bolt upright, as if the realization has electrified me. I look around, but there’s nobody here. Nobody here but me. Heat floods my face anyway, as if there’re lots of people here and they’re all looking at me and they all know what it is I’m thinking. What I’m feeling.