She picked up the lamp and went to the window, staring across the valley to where they could see the lights of the house he’d just left. Some of them were on, but there was one darkened room, where he could just see a gleam of light, as though an answering lamp had come on.
‘We’ll always be within sight of each other,’ Laura said. ‘When it’s dark, we can look out and see their lights, and they can see ours. It had to be here and nowhere else.’
She raised the lamp high, moving it back and forth. As Gino watched, incredulous, the pinpoint of light in the far building, also moved back and forth, as though in answer.
‘Who’s doing that?’ he asked.
‘Alex of course,’ she said calmly.
‘You and Alex-friends?’
‘Friends and allies, as sisters ought to be. Look.’
She moved the lamp again, and back through the darkness came the answer, the ancient, unmistakable message, that he’d thought never to find again.
It was the same message that he’d discovered in Laura’s arms, in the circle of her love, and it was wonderfully, overwhelmingly right that it should be she who evoked it for him now, shining across the darkened valley.
All’s well. Welcome home!
Lucy Gordon
