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vicariously. You no closer to settling down? Whatever happened to … Melissa, wasn’t it?”
    “Melissa moved out West with her job.” Macbeth forced a smile. “California. We’ve lost touch.”
    “That’s a shame.” Corbin shook his head. “That’s the kind of touch you don’t want to lose. She really was something else, John …”
    “I know. But these things happen. At least they seem to happen to me. I’m not the easiest guy to live with.”
    “A real shame …” Corbin’s faraway expression suggested he was simulating Melissa in his mind.
    “Why don’t you tell me about your work problems?” Macbeth changed the subject.
    “Like I said, no shop …” Corbin clearly was as reluctant totalk about his work as Macbeth was about his private life and they each retreated into superficialities.
    They spent the next hour eating and chatting, the conversation skimming over the surface of each other’s lives. Macbeth found he did most of the talking, telling Corbin about his work for the university and his life in Copenhagen; about the similarities to and differences from life in the States and how you changed your personality and expectations to suit your environment. Corbin smiled. Nodded. Commented. But it was very clear that his mind was still elsewhere and his spirit even more sapped by tiredness. Macbeth decided to cut the evening as short as possible. The pretty waitress with the auburn hair came back and, skipping dessert, Macbeth ordered a coffee.
    “Sorry,” said Corbin. “I’ve been lousy company.”
    “Not at all.” Macbeth smiled. “It’s been great to catch up. But I can see you’re under a lot of stress. I do wish you’d tell me what’s been going on with your work …”
    Corbin was about to say something when his cellphone rang.

4

JOSH HOBERMAN. VIRGINIA
    Josh Hoberman’s heart was pounding.
    His wakefulness nauseatingly sudden and total, he felt the burn of acid reflux in his gullet. He woke sitting bolt upright in his bed, unmoving, holding his breath, trying to work out what it had been that had ripped him out of sleep. There was silence. Or near-silence. He heard the sound of a police or ambulance siren somewhere far away on North Shore Drive. A dog barking, again distant.
    Nothing in the house. Or near.
    He let his breath go and sighed, lifting his watch from the nightstand. Midnight-thirty. Maybe it had just been a bad dream that had chased him out of sleep, or a raccoon knocking over a trash can, or too much coffee drunk too late in the day. Whatever it had been, Hoberman knew he would not get back to sleep for another hour or so. He walked through to the bathroom, urinated and flushed, then washed his hands, looking at himself in the mirror. Someone had stolen his reflection and replaced it with that of his father: same face, same doleful eyes, same shape. He was getting old. He had just turned fifty but the tired bags under his eyes added half a decade to his age. But his hair was still thick and dark. At least he had that. He’d have to do something about his weight though. He was too heavy for his height and it was all around his waist. A heart-attack roll. A heart attack had killed his father. At fifty-four.
    Hoberman decided to go back down to his study and do an hour or so’s work. The trick was to do something necessary but tedious, something that would tire rather than stimulate.
    The house was old. Somewhere around one hundred and fifty years old and set way out on its own, a mile or so back from the road and embraced by a muffle of thick Virginia forest. It had offered the isolation Hoberman wanted; but with the isolation came a degree of uncertainty, of risk.
    Hoberman didn’t bother with a robe when he walked out onto the landing, switching on the light. One of the benefits of living off the beaten track was that there were no neighbors or passers-by to spy on you. It was as he stood there on the landing, naked but for his shorts, that he heard it.