I tug the counterpane off the bed, pull it over me, lie down on the floor on my side and close my eyes so that this new merciless day doesn’t begin yet. So I can lie awhile longer and think of that other green and flowering Libyan spring, when I was young and lay under my plane and listened to the rain patter on the wings, and thought of my guns and my impending battle, and most of all of my true love, of her, of her.

Downstairs a small dog is barking. A dog who’s starting to get the hang of waiting until he’s allowed outside. Who, on the occasions that he disgraces himself, is almost inconsolable. The barks are muffled but his desperation is clear.

I pull off my covering and make my way down to the kitchen.

Bailey hurries out to the hedge. Returns to find his food bowl unfilled. He noses it across the floor to me. I know he needs feeding but it takes a while to enlist my muscles for the task. Eventually I serve him his dole of kibble thinking that my shock is somehow unmerited since nothing has changed. It’s been real and true all this time.

I go into the dining room. I thought I was steady but as I pick up the telephone receiver my left hand begins to shake—big, pulsing quakes like someone afflicted with a disease of the nerves. I manage to hook the forefinger of my right hand into the “zero” hole of the rotary dial of the telephone: 0603 for Norwich. I drag the dial down to the stop, take my finger out of the hole, the dial purrs its way back again. Entering the whole number takes a long time. The connection is made, the phone in Norwich rings and rings.

Tom asked me if I’d known about anyone called Sébastien. He must have been sounding me out, trying to gauge what I knew. Calculating exactly how secret it was, the story cached inside those schoolgirlish blue covers. No, she never said anything about him to me. I wouldn’t have cared about this Sébastien if she had told me. She didn’t betray anyone with him.

“Yep?”

A breathy voice, not my son’s. Must be Ade or Jase.

“H-hello. May I speak to Tom, please? This is his father—”

“He’s not here.”

“It’s seven a.m.,” I plead to Jase or Ade. “He must be.”

“He’s not, sorry.”

The line is cut. I replace the receiver.

Time passes.

—

I’m in the kitchen again, and Bailey’s making revolutions around the table, clockwise, anticlockwise, stopping by my feet on each turn and then moving on. He doesn’t understand why I’m not talking to him. I’ve made some tea, it appears, but it sits in front of me, cold in the mug. A skin has formed.