‘So what were you studying?’ I asked, interested.

‘I was studying philosophy and religion.’

I smiled. So, he was very nearly a priest.

‘An English university taught me much, Nikki. I learnt how good the English are at dissembling. How polite and clever they can be at deflecting interest away from themselves. How hard it is for them to give away their privacy. To grieve openly. To speak of what is in their heart.’

I looked down at my hands. I played with the white linen sheet and the silence I would have to break stretched into a silence I could hear around me. It made me dizzy with the weight of it.

Mohktar waited and I knew he would sit there all day until I was ready. I leant against the pillows and closed my eyes and I was immediately back on the beach running after Saffie towards the lighthouse. I opened them with a jerk, shivering, and stared at Mohktar. He saw the fear in my eyes.

He leant forward. ‘Nikki, if you do not know how to begin to talk to me, or you are afraid, just say whatever comes into your head? Your mother told me you could not speak about your dream. Can you still remember it?’

‘Oh yes. I remember it.’

‘Will you try and tell it to me?’

I reached out my hand towards him. I felt as if I was pleading. ‘It felt real, so real. As if it really happened and wasn’t a dream. I’m afraid that if I talk about it I will hurtle back to the terror of it. I don’t want to go back there…’

Mohktar took my hand for a moment. It felt hot and dry like a stone that has absorbed too much sun.

‘Nikki, it matters not whether it was a dream or your subconscious, lah? Dreams serve a purpose. They alert us to something our conscious mind has recorded but banished or forgotten.’

I shook my head. ‘No. It is Saffie who alerted me. Saffie who took me back.’

‘For a reason?’

‘Yes. For a reason.’

‘Then, my dear Nikki, do not try and work it out, just take me where your dream took you. Nothing bad can happen, it is daylight and I am here beside you.’

I turned slightly away from him. It is daylight and I am here beside you. He sounded soothing, like Fergus. Have I stopped still in my childhood? Am I emotionally arrested, a part of me forever wandering as a child, like Saffie?

I lay trying to be calm. I had to stay very still for a while and Mohktar must have wondered if I had fallen asleep. Then I began to tell him of my dream and he leant forward to catch my words.

‘Saffie was here. She came to my bed. She wanted me to follow her. I followed her out onto the beach into the afternoon. It was hot. We ran chasing the crabs towards the rocks and there was a man sitting there on his own smoking a cigarette. He had a panama hat on and sunglasses and had very long legs, like a spider. Saffie said hello but he was not pleased to see us, he wanted to be left alone. Saffie said she was bored and could he play with her. He said he did not know how to play with girls and she should go back to her mother and sister. He could not see me.