The linoleum floor of the kitchen is cold beneath my feet; I should have brought my slippers. I try two cupboards before I find the glasses. As I fill one from the kitchen tap, I look out the window, to the back garden. There’s a wood that finishes at the low, crumbling drystone wall at the end of the lawn, some twenty meters away. I know from the boundary map the lawyer showed me that the wood is mine, and so, too, is the fishing lake that lies beyond it, but right now there’s very little to be seen except extreme blackness where the moonlight can’t penetrate—a true darkness that nothing can break through. I wonder what it would be like to walk through that wood right now. Oddly I don’t think it would be terrifying. I expect it can see me now, the wood. I can almost feel its eyes upon me, like a prickle on my skin—not unpleasant, just a constant pressure. Not even a pressure, an awareness. I expect the wood saw my father, too, many years ago, perhaps filling up a glass from the kitchen tap just as I have done, or raiding the fridge for a late-night snack. I wonder if the wood knows what happened to him.

But now the cold of the floor is chilling more than just my feet, and my warm bed has a certain appeal. The kitchen table is strewn with miscellaneous items from the shopping that haven’t yet found a home. I grab a roll of toilet paper, as there was no spare in my bathroom, and take that and the glass with me, focusing on not spilling the water as I slowly climb the stairs, still relying only upon the moonlight, and relieved to feel the warmth of the wood under my feet once more. When I get to the top of the stairs, I turn for my bedroom, but instantly I know there is something wrong. I couldn’t say what, but I can feel it before I can see it . . .

There’s a man in the hallway.

My father is living in Colombia. Or Venezuela. (Really, anywhere exotic without an extradition treaty where a dollar goes a long way.) He’s lithely strong and has grown a beard which is more gray than dark now. He likes to lean on the balustrade of his veranda which overlooks the city as darkness falls. Sometimes there’s a woman with him, but never the same one for long. He leans on the balustrade, a cerveza in one hand, and looks at the stars, and sometimes he wonders if his daughter is looking at the same sky.

TWO