“Keep close to the fort,” she was warned by the Arab who had led her through the wire. This was how she came to Abyla. No money. No doctor’s pension. No documents. On a mule smelling strongly of seaweed.

We may not like them, she thought, straightening. Perhaps we hate them. But at least we are no longer at war with them.

She walked back into her glass cabin. Who could be spending Christmas in Abyla? she wondered. Unless, of course, they happened to be something to do with the tunnel. No one came to Abyla for Christmas. Tromso hadn’t been for three years, Periclito for four.

She folded her formica table and stacked the empty boxes. Since the shop would be closed for two days she decided on one final spray. She shook the pump gun, inhaled and began spraying a mixture of washing-up liquid, fizzy mineral water and colloidal copper dust.

She gathered up the plants which would not survive the holiday. The chrysanthemums she would donate to the square. The almost fresh carnations to Señora Criado. And the begonia in the teapot? If he had been in Abyla, she would have given it to Periclito. But he was abroad and perhaps it was as well. He would have knocked over the plant as he perfected his mariposa, or overwatered it.

Thanks to Teodoro, she had a wonderful present for her son. But she had nothing for Rosita.

Go on, give it to her. David wouldn’t mind. Rosita might discover it to be magic after all, despite the English words on the base. Marie Amaral’s lungs were hurting so much she seized the teapot. Once outside she took several breaths. Yes, she would give it to Rosita, and at the same time she would talk to her about Silkleigh. Marie Amaral would forget all she ever knew of the man. She would look upon him as someone loved by her stepdaughter.

She locked the door, peering into the cabin to see that nothing had been left undone. She gathered up the flowerpots and faced the empty square. She was not used to the quiet of the city. She addressed the benches, the waterless fountain, the carnivorous trees: Does it matter? In the course of things, does it matter what Major Merimée did to me? David, it was like . . . nothing.

The poniente scraped a cardboard seat through the cockleshells. From the Calle Camoes came the hornet buzz of a motorbike. In the breeze Marie Amaral thought she smelt chicory.

5

Wavery was reading on the terrace.

“Kay, kay, kay.”

He heard their harsh unanswered sob and then the wing swish. They flew above him in an unsteady V, as if they had nowhere to go, passing so near he was able to make out five bare heads, red as brick dust, the scruffy ruff of pointed feathers, the black-green wings as wide as men.

“Kay, kay, kay.”

He leaped up. He had never seen such birds. Nor had he heard such a cry. What could they be? The storks from Santa Maria’s bell tower? The cattle birds of Yeats’ poem? The Ambassador’s geese? He looked to see if the birds had girls’ necks, but the tree hid them and they flew on, over his bedroom roof, towards the withered headland of Monte Hacho.