“I’ll find out,” promised the man on the sofa next to him.

“If you would, Max.”

“By the way, I clean forgot. Aren’t congratulations in order? A dickybird told me of your prize.”

3

Flights of duck passed through the dust, carrying spring on their creaking wings. Monte Hacho became yellow with broom and oranges settled on the trees along Calle Camoes.

For the first time since his arrival in December, Genia Ortiz noticed a change in her neighbour’s routine. Now there was activity on his roof terrace. Before Christmas the Consul General had been in the habit of sitting at his round metal table, surrounded by a pile of books. Since then his routine seemed filled with a new resourcefulness. He read less, but with greater concentration. He had also taken to filling out page after page of foolscap. Genia Ortiz, watering her flowers and straining to get a better look, did not believe he was engaged in Foreign Office work. From what she remembered of Consul Cazes in the Hotel Zamora, he had not spent hours with his head in his hands, ripping up pages and writing out what must have been fair copies. Señor Wavery was either engaged in a book or a passionate correspondence.

The second change concerned the state of her neighbour’s terrace.

Until he received Catharine’s letter, the deterioration of Wavery’s spirit had been plotted by his inattention to his surroundings. Since then his attitude had changed. He was never going back to Sintra, that much he knew, but he could measure the progress of the days which separated him from Catharine by transforming the terrace outside his bedroom.

To this end, Wavery had enlisted the help of Marie Amaral who was able to procure most of the plants he wanted from her Dutchman. He bought some tubs and painted them white, planting them with a special cistus which grew only on the tip of Cape St Vincent. He constructed a trellis against the low wall dividing his terrace from Genia Ortiz’ balcony and on the trellis he trailed a clematis and a trumpet vine.

“How nice to see a trumpet vine again,” called Genia Ortiz, although she would have preferred it pink not orange. It amused her the way Wavery diligently cleaned each leaf. After five years she no longer noticed the spoil dust coating the leaves of her flowers. Dry and sticky, it was something she had learned to live with, like the noise of the muck lorries, the mud on the roads, the interference on her television set.

“Might I ask, what it is that you’re writing?”

“It’s nothing really, Señora Ortiz. Just some things I’ve been meaning to catch up with.”

Yes, but what things? If they were letters, he never seemed to send them.

The heat continued without let. A warm February carried the devil in its belly, warned Halima at the ironing board.

Halima’s warning had been provoked by a number of fresh appearances from Sandra the Rapist. ABYLA LIVES IN TERROR! was the headline following her attack in rapid succession on two ratas and the chairman of the telephone exchange, to each of whom she had presented a bunch of flowers. “Venus Flower Trap” added a sub-editor, a reference to Sandra’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of bouquets.