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bow vaguely in John’s direction closed the door behind him.
    Elijah sighed, reaching across to push the window open a little further, so that the scent of dry grass seeped over the windowsill.
    He surveyed John for a while without speaking, then reached for the bottle. ‘I think perhaps we should talk,’ he said. John took the cup he was offered, recoiling as the whisky fumes stung his eyes: So I haven’t got away with it after all , he thought, with greater relief than regret. Elijah wiped a droplet from his moustache, and gazed without speaking at the other man over steepled fingers. His eyes, above the russet squarecut beard, were mild and frank, reacting readily to the glow and fade of light. As he turned them now on John the pupils spread and darkened his gaze; he said, with a suggestion of mischief, ‘But not, I think, tonight: there are some things best kept for morning, and a kinder light – can you remember the way to your room?’

THURSDAY
    I
    John was woken by ringing that came not from the piano he’d heard the night before, but from a newly hollow place inside his skull. Through the pink net of veins in his lowered lids he saw the sun filling the room to its corners, and began to raise himself on his elbows. Pain surged from the back of his neck to his forehead then receded in a sickening wave. He sat cross-legged on the sheets, carefully counting air in and out of his lungs and swallowing bile. His bladder was painfully full, and when he was sure he could stand without vomiting he crossed the room to the small bathroom. He sat to relieve himself, wondering how long it would be before he was sick, and whether afterwards he’d be himself again. The little room was surprisingly cool: he shivered, and saw gooseflesh break out on his knees, but in time the chill settled his stomach, and he sat there a long while fixing his eyes on the sink, willing the world to shrink to the proportions of the blue bar of soap in its cracked clay dish.
    A little while later, with nausea stirring his stomach, he stood half-dressed at the window. It was another day without any sign of rain, another morning without birdsong; in the clear early light the garden below looked diminished and ordinary, the folly at the end a prop for an abandoned play and the glasshouse stained and shabby. The windows were thickly glazed in uneven panes that threw back a mottled reflection nothing like the neat-edged image in his own mirror every morning. The face he saw now was too pale and lean, the hair too long, and under heavy lids glossed with sweat the pale eyes glittered. He raised his right hand, uncertain whether the other man would raise his left in the proper greeting. ‘What came over you?’ he said. ‘What in God’s name have you done?’ The watching man had no reply, and John returned to the edge of the bed, cradling his aching head in his hands: what had he done, after all? Nothing brave or impassioned, not the brief lapse into madness to be expected of a man arriving suddenly in middle age, but an abuse of kindness and trust: he’d been welcomed and cared for – he touched the place where the woman had put a kind hand – and in return he’d deceived them all. Recalling the words of the preacher the night before ( I think perhaps we should talk) he felt the unease of a child awaiting the headmaster’s summons.
    In the sober light of morning, away from the gaze of a dozen eyes, there’d be no difficulty in slipping downstairs and making his way through the forest to his car (he imagined it sinking already into the dense verge, its windows curtained with an overnight fall of pine needles), back on the road to his brother, or to his ordinary ordered life. He thought it must be early still, though outside on the terrace the sundial was lying. He pressed an ear to the door, but the house was silent: his heart quickened – here was his best chance of quietly leaving with no questions asked or answered. In their jug beside the