In the silence that follows I search desperately for the right words, for the words that would make him listen to me. The small clouds that have been partly obscuring the bright moon part briefly, allowing pearly moonbeams to fall upon Freddie’s face. The shadows beneath my brother’s eyes deepen, so that I feel I am gazing into the empty sockets of a skull. The image is so powerful it makes me gasp. As if sharing my vision, the Dark Spirit speaks again.

Your brother does not belong in the Land of Day!

Be gone! My brother has nothing to do with you.

Freddie notices my change in mood.

“You are cold,” he says. “Let’s go in.”

I try to remain in the moment with him, forcing myself to press him to go away. I will not let the wicked spirit come between me and my brother. “Is there nothing that would persuade you?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking. Really, you don’t.”

“But what is there for you here? Apart from … I mean … you haven’t anybody to stay for…”

“That you disapprove of my friends comes as no surprise, Lil, but they are my friends. They … understand me.”

“They use you.” I cannot help speaking my mind. “I’ve seen how they take advantage of your good nature and your money.”

“Am I so very loathsome? Can I only buy friendship?”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it? What use am I to you? Or to Mama? Or to anyone? At least my friends value me, in their own unedifying way.”

“We value you. I value you.”

“You can’t look at me without that dreadful pitying expression you seem to reserve solely for me. Do you know, it is precisely the way our dear late father used to look at me? Quite a legacy you have there, that disappointed look.”

I feel the familiar exasperation a conversation with Freddie often brings about. Taking a breath, I try hard not to sound as despairing of him as I feel. At last I say, “I miss you, Freddie. I miss the brother I had.”

“I’m sorry about that, sister dear, truly I am. To be honest, I quite miss me, too, sometimes. But there it is. The clock cannot be made to run backward. Time has shaped me into the person I am now, like it or not.” He takes a silver cigarette case from his inside pocket and selects a small Russian cigar. He lights it and inhales deeply, filling the air with the smell of dark, treacly tobacco. “Being in mourning doesn’t help a fellow, I must say. Doesn’t help one bit. All this moping around, wearing black, having to turn down invitations endlessly.”

“It’s not for very long,” I say, though in my heart I agree with him.