He blinked. “Well,” he said, “I think if anyone were to believe in something more than themselves, if you were to believe in something, I would say it is not unreasonable to think that when you touch a baby’s face you are touching the face of God. Have you ever seen a baby in an old people’s home? They are worshipped. They become divine.”

“Hmm,” said Carmen.

“So I can see the appeal. But I do not have a true church, no. I was raised a very strict Quaker, in a place that has very few Quakers, so . . . we all stuck together. But no.”

Carmen smiled. “You’re a faker Quaker?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” His voice grew wistful for a moment. “Although often I find in music . . .”

“There is, like, divine stuff?”

“Well, that is as good a word as any,” he said, and they continued on in silence.

“You’re a very strange person,” said Carmen.

“All God’s creatures are strange,” said Oke, but he was teasing her, she knew.

The cold was biting now. Oke indicated a courtyard to their right at the top of the steps that led up to the Royal Mile.

“This is where I stay,” he said.

“I know,” said Carmen.

She smiled and suddenly found herself moving closer toward him. There was nobody else in the dark alleyway. He looked at his hands, reluctant to make an advance, but she found his hand herself, in a glove too thin for the weather, and took it and put it between hers. His green eyes locked on to hers. The freezing night fell still, silence all around. Under the freezing Edinburgh sky, under the gray tenement walls, with hundreds of years of history on all sides, in a world as old as time, she leaned toward him . . .

Suddenly, footsteps hastened by, followed by a loud sniffling noise. They both glanced up.

It was Dahlia, staring at Oke and sobbing noisily.

“Oh goodness,” said Oke. “Are you all right?”

He went to move after her, and Carmen would have done so too, not sure what was going on, when her phone blared out, the noise bouncing off the old gray stone walls, an interloper, a thing that did not belong.

Oke turned and looked back toward her as Dahlia stopped in the close leading to the street, leaning her head against the wall as if inviting Oke to comfort her. Carmen felt a lump in her throat as she waved him on, looking at her phone in case the call was from Sofia.

The number was private. She pressed “okay.”

“This fucking hotel room,” said Blair. “It’s too big. Too fucking big. I’m coming home, gorgeous. Via that freezing cold town you live in!”