Candlenight

of his buildings. Then some poor widow would be staggered at how much she could get for her cottage. And, in no time at all, there'd be a little colony of English, enough to hold a bridge party with After Eight mints.

Dai gave Y Groes a final rueful glance before turning into the forestry.

And in time, he thought, the little clutch of eggs will turn rotten in the nest.

Part Two NOT MEANT TO BE THERE

Chapter V

ENGLAND

Lying back, red hair all over the pillow and the cane headboard, Miranda applied the Zippo to the end of her cigarette and said, 'So how was it for you, Miranda?'

Berry Morelli said, 'Huh?' the sweat on his back was merely damp now, and chilly. It was an hour before dawn, the bedroom half-lit from the street.

In a dreamy voice, Miranda replied,' Well, since you ask, Miranda, not too wonderful. I can say, with some degree of confidence, that I have definitely had better. I suppose, as rapes go, it was not without consideration…'

'Rape?' Berry Morelli sat up. 'You said rape?'

'Well, if it was meant to be love-making,' Miranda said, 'it was distressingly short on the customary endearments. In fact, now that I think about it, it was entirely silent, bar the odd sharp intake of breath.'

'Hey, listen I…' Berry leaned over her and helped himself to one of her cigarettes from the bedside table.

'…And then I began to detect in the rapist a…sort of underlying absence of joy, would that describe it? One's first experience of pre-coital tristesse. Or perhaps it was simply lack of interest, which would be considerably less tolerable.' Miranda turned onto her side to face him, looking pale and fragile — which she wasn't — in the hazy streetlight from the uncurtained window.

'OK,' she said. 'What's eating you, Morelli?'

Berry hauled the black hair out of his eyes. The hair was still wet. From the rain, not the sweat. 'Listen, I'm sorry.'

'Oh, please… not the apology. I expect I enjoyed it more than you anyway.' She covered up a breast and stared into space, smoking.

This Miranda. You could never figure out if she was deeply wounded or what. Berry rolled out of bed and into his bathrobe. 'You want some tea? He was fully into tea now, no coffee these days. Very British.

'No sugar,' Miranda said. 'No, wait… make that two sugars. I suspect, God help me, that the night is yet young.'

'I'll fetch a tray. Black?'

'Morelli, we haven't all got the zeal of the converted.'

'OK.' While Berry's hands moved things around in the tiny kitchen, his head was still walking the streets. There'd been cabs around the hospital but he'd needed to walk. Death did that to you, he thought. You had to keep moving, proving to yourself you still could.

A bad night, in the end.

And he'd lost a friend.

He couldn't afford to lose a friend in this country. It only left one, if you didn't include Miranda. Which he didn't, yet.

'Biscuits, too, Morelli,' she called imperiously from the bedroom. Miranda, whom he'd often find in his bed but whom he hesitated to call his regular girlfriend. Who'd gone home with him the first time because, she explained, she liked the sound of his name, the way you liked the sound of Al Pacino and Robert de Niro. There were dukes in Miranda's family and her aunt had once been a temporary lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne. Berry liked the sound of Miranda's name too, the way you liked the sound of cucumber sandwiches and Glyndebourne.

'Morelli!'

'What?'

'Biscuits.'

'Yeah, I heard.'

'The chocolate ginger things from Sainsbury's. OK?'

'Right.'

Earlier tonight Miranda's good mood had blown like a light bulb after she'd produced tickets for Peter Gabriel and he'd told her he wouldn't be able to make the gig on account of it was Old Winstone's farewell binge. Old Winstone, his friend.

She hadn't believed him. 'What's he doing having it on a Sunday night?'

'All about Monday morning. If he gets smashed, he doesn't wake up till way past the time he normally goes to work. Thus avoiding the initial trauma of his first day of retirement.'

'You think I'm awfully stupid don't you, Morelli?' Miranda had said.

'Listen, I'm…'

'Sorry. Yes.'

Berry put on the light as he carried the tea tray into the bedroom. 'I didn't figure on you being here when I got in.'

'I suppose that explains it.' Miranda said. 'You thought you were shagging someone else.'

'You never came back before. Not the same night. Not after a fight. How'd you get in anyway?'

'I'm frightfully unpredictable,' she said, sitting up, breasts wobbling at him and somehow making the trayful of cups jiggle in his hands. 'It's part of my appeal.' She giggled, a sound like Chinese bells, signifying things were OK again, for the time being. 'And I'm not going to tell you how I got in, because I'm also terribly clever and rather mysterious.'

Mysterious, she wasn't. In spite of everything, he grinned, wishing he could say she was his girlfriend. Why was he so goddamn insecure? He set the tea tray down on the bed and Miranda reached across to pour. 'Too strong as usual, Morelli. You're an awfully selfish bastard.'

He flinched a little. It was what his old man had said, leading to Berry's decision to leave the States. You're a goddamn selfish bastard. You don't have to agree with a fucking thing I stand for, but when you screw things up for me to further your own pissant career, that's indefensible, boy.

'Listen, I guess what happened was I used you,' he confessed to Miranda, 'to reinforce my hold on life. How's that sound?'

'Pretentious.'

'It was kind of a heavy night.'

'You're not pissed, though, are you?'

'No. I… Jesus, this guy — a friend — he just died on me.'

'To be quite honest I thought somebody was dying on me' Miranda said. 'Don't do it again. Wake me up first. I might've missed it.'

'Yeah. I'm. ' Shit, he seemed to spend half his time apologising to people. Maybe he should apologise for apologising too much. He felt he could still hear the ambulance siren, the efficient clunk of the rear doors after they'd loaded the stretcher. The finality of it. He'd known then that it was final.

'Oh for God's sake, Morelli…' Miranda drowned her cigarette end in the dregs of her tea, a small rebellion against her refined upbringing. 'Tell mummy all about it. Who died on you? You don't mean really died? As in, you know… turning up one's toes?'