“I’m sorry, Michael. I’ll have to say no.”

“It’s not overpriced.”

“It’s not that.”

“What then? Did you not like the house? I can’t believe that. Isn’t it just up your street?”

“We felt it wasn’t quite right for us.”

“Well, if it’s not right, it’s not right.”

“You’ll have no trouble selling.”

“None at all. There’s no problem about offers. I just wanted to help two old friends. Now when are you and Penny –”

There was the chastening sound of a baton tapping on wrought iron. “But here am I, talking all about myself! What about you, señor? How is the house? The drains – have they been naughty with you?”

“Not yet.”

“I see scaffolding everywhere, mais oú en est le travail?”

Wavery explained that his foreman was still in Morocco.

“And your luggage – has it arrived?”

“Tomorrow, I’m hoping.”

“What a relief that will be.” Through the French windows she could see the corner of a bed and draped over a chair what might have been a woman’s scarf. “I too can remember what it is to live out of a suitcase! And will Señora Wavery be here for Christmas?”

“There’s no longer any Señora Wavery,” said Wavery.

“Oh,” said Genia Ortiz. But she was in no frame of mind to be glum on his behalf. She gathered up her photographs. She was going back and she wanted to celebrate. She had settled too long on this sliver of rock. People who settled this long generally died of Rock Fever. “Consul General, you won’t change your mind about a vodka?”

“Again, it’s extremely kind of you, Señora Ortiz, but the library closes in half an hour.”

From inside her apartment came a bleeping.

“My telephone!”

2

As on most Saturday mornings, the library in Calle Real was empty. The one sound was the buzzing of a defective light bulb.

Dolores sat at a large table near the stacks devoted loosely to Local History. (The tolerance of Franco’s authorities towards certain authors not judged to be dangerous explained the continued presence on this shelf of Teodoro Zamora’s History of Abyla, Strabo’s Geography, in the 1458 translation by Guarino of Verona, the works of Diodorus Siculus, two copies of the first volume of Discours sur l’Histoire Universelle and several bound copies in blue leather of the Illustrated London News for the years 1897–1914, a gift of British Consul Cazes.) Dolores inspected her face in the blade of a paperknife. She was concerned she might have caught a spot off Captain Panteco with whom she had slept the night.

The telephone shrilled. “Abyla Public Library.”

“It’s Lustrino.”

“I was thinking of you,” she said truthfully. Her windmill earrings were too large to wear when speaking into the telephone. She picked them off and played with them on the table.

“Mohamed give you a good breakfast?” This morning Panteco had dropped her off at the Café Ulises. He demanded a farewell kiss, during which Toribio had taken the opportunity to leap from behind.