He went back to the front door where, after a moment’s hesitation, he steeled himself to look out. Sure enough, the only thing standing on the street was the night.
He had one foot in each of two different worlds.
Prudence was standing across the room by the entrance to the kitchen, her face lit by the flashing light—blue, gone, blue, gone.
Gabriel backed away, and out. Out! And he walked the coast until morning slid under the dark, its light under his feet.
Annie knocked timidly and let herself in. Gabriel was in the breathless diwan, stretched out, half asleep.
“Are you sick?” she asked, standing over him.
“Could be.” He wasn’t quite sure when he had last seen her, given the weeks were passing in a muddle of slothful days and wretched nights.
“You haven’t been to work in ages. They asked me about you. I’ve tried to ring, but you won’t pick up.”
“Sorry.”
“You had me worried.”
Gabriel kicked out his legs and sat up, leaning back against cushions.
Annie sat beside him, her feet tucked under her rump on the edge of the mattress. “Have you been eating?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re planning to stay, you need to go back to work. We can’t support you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“What I mean is, we won’t be here. To help.”
He forced his eyes to focus on her. The mist was clearing.
“We’re leaving,” she said. “Rolf wants the baby to be born in Switzerland, where I’ll be closer to Mam and Dad.”
“Baby?” His voice thickened. “Annie—” Her smile lit up the inside of his head. He reached out to her. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She bit her bottom lip as if to stop the grin spreading too far.
“God, that’s excellent. Fecking brilliant! Congratulations! That’s just so . . .” Suddenly overcome, he started to weep.
“Don’t,” she said, touching his face. “We’ve done enough crying. I was so completely convinced it was never going to happen, until—”
“No way,” he said, regaining composure. “Don’t put this down to Bahla.”
“Something unblocked that day. I felt it, Gabe.”
He smiled. “Okay. Whatever. Who cares?”
She nodded. All giddy.
Who is this beautiful, delighted woman, he wondered, and where has she been all this time? “So, umm, you’re off?”
“Rolf’s contract is up in July. He won’t be renewing. I’ll leave in a few weeks. End of May, maybe.”
“So you needn’t have bothered making that whole move out to the villa.”
“Oh, I think we did.” She glanced around. “This place is stagnant. Made me stagnant. Anyway, now we want to be where we want to be and do what we want to do.”
“Rolf is finally going to paint?”
“Yup.” She widened her cheerful eyes. “No more plant machinery!”
Gabriel wanted to say, That’s excellent. Bloody great. But another slice of his heart was being chipped off as she sat there, glowing.
“Don’t look at me like that, Gabriel. You can leave too. You’ve been skittering about in that stupid job long enough. It’s time you got back to the real world.”
“Wherever that is.”
“You could come to Europe with us. Work in France. Play again.”
“Thanks, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Her expression stiffened and her shoulders suddenly seemed pointed. “Not because of that woman? Or that spell, I should say—because that’s all she is, Gabriel. Some apparition you’ve conjured up.”
“And this from the woman who believes she conceived as a result of sihr?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
Looking around again, Annie said, “This place is disgusting.”
“Yeah, my poltergeist cleaning lady is really letting things go.”
“Is she here? Now?” She said it warily, as if there might be another person in the room.
He fell back on the cushions. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“What? But . . . that’s good.”
He turned his sadness on her, though it threw no shade on the deep contentment that poured from all her features. “If you say so.”
Annie got up and wandered up and down, stopping in a shaft of light, where dust particles sparkled. “The air is dustier than usual. Dead. It’s as if no one moves or breathes in this house.” She looked over at him. “You absolutely must leave with us. At best that woman was a trickster. At worst, a devil. A shaytan.”
“The devil was in me in Ireland, Annie.”
“I know.”
She stood; he lay; the air didn’t move.
“So?”
“. . . There was an ambulance,” he said. “Lights. Flashing. Outside—no ambulance. Inside, lights. Flashing. There. Gone. There.”
Annie kneeled in front of him. “Ambulance?”
“Flashing.”
“Where?”
“Nowhere. That’s the thing.”
For the first time in months, his sister properly looked at him. “You’re not well. You probably haven’t been well for . . . maybe for a long time. Which is good. What you did,” she looked to the side, talking to herself, comforting herself, “that would have been diminished responsibility. It explains everything.” She took his hand. “You must come with us and be treated, made well again. There’s no need to live in exile like this.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“You have to! The authorities will throw you out.”
“I’ll get around that.”
“Come to Switzerland. This child, Gabriel, this baby is going to fix things. Make us all better. Mam sounds like a different person alr—”
“I have to be here. She’ll come back.”
Annie stood up. “This really isn’t what I want to talk about right now!” And just as swiftly she softened again. “Why did she leave, anyway?”
“You see, I tried to . . .” Gabriel stared at his bare feet “. . . remove her. Called her bluff, and she called mine.”
“What do you mean?”
He wondered about telling her; he even wondered if Annie was really there and if he was actually lying in the diwan or only thought he was. He spent his days and nights wondering.
Prudence had said, the night after the blue lights, when he was in the kitchen and she was standing in the doorway,
