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years ago, but his publishers weren’t satisfied and wanted him to make some changes, and he ended up rewriting the whole thing. He’s almost finished it now but he isn’t happy with it at all, he’d really like to rewrite it all over again but it’s impossible, it would never be finished if he did that. He looks sad when he tells me this too.
    I tell him how much my friend and I liked Ophelia , and that I loved the photo of him inside the front cover, a black-and-white picture of a young Gabriel leaning against a birch tree, it looks like late spring, the leaves on the tree are still small enough to let through plenty of light, the dappled, impressionisticlight of late spring. Gabriel is wearing a black jacket and a white shirt, he is holding a cigarette in his hand and looking straight into the camera. I thought he looked so worldly, so unattainable.
    He laughs, tells me I’m sweet. Stella hadn’t read any of his books when they met, he says. She hardly even knew who he was. They met at a party while she was still a student, he tells me how beautiful he thought she was, pale skin and strawberry-blonde hair, I swallow, I have to look away, gaze at the moon, which has moved a little farther across the sky, it just seems to be getting bigger and bigger. Stella was wearing a white cardigan, he says, and I know the one he means, I envied her that cardigan. She wore it one Christmas at Mom and Dad’s, white angora, she had her hair up and she looked both severe and soft at the same time in her silky cardigan, she looked like someone I would never have dared to talk to if she hadn’t been my sister. I tell him this and he laughs again, says he wouldn’t have had the nerve either if he hadn’t been drinking, he says she looked so young, he is watching me over the rim of his glass, seems on the verge of saying something more, but changes his mind.

    He is already sitting on the patio when I wake up, reading the newspaper with his feet on the table, ablue-and-white coffee cup beside them. The clear air has become misty, but the heat has not diminished. It is different now, sultry and oppressive, as if a thunderstorm is coming. Swallows swoop across the grass, their movements rapid and erratic, flickering. They are flying low now, the approaching storm means the insects they are hunting stay close to the ground, it’s to do with the air pressure, it forces them downward, Stella has explained it to me. My head feels fragile, as if a headache is just coming to life deep inside and will soon make its presence felt, sending out crackling impulses of pain that will thud against my forehead and my temples, as if I were inside a thunder ball. I think I ought to take a painkiller just to be on the safe side, I think about the cool rustle of the foil inside the box of tablets.
    “I was going to cut the grass but I haven’t got the energy in this heat,” says Gabriel. “There’s coffee in the machine if you want some.”
    When I come back with my coffee and a sandwich he passes me a section of the newspaper. I open it but can’t be bothered to read anything, instead I watch Gabriel, who is half hidden behind his section, he’s wearing a T-shirt today as well, I stare at his sunburnt arms. He puts the paper down on the table, quickly looks up at me, I meet his eyes and smile, he smiles back, glances distractedly at the recipe of the day onthe back page, smoked mackerel with some kind of cold sauce. Then he pushes the newspaper away.
    “So … what about going for a swim?”
    “Sure … but where?”
    He shrugs his shoulders.
    “Wherever you like. There’s a lake, it’s about ten minutes’ walk from here. Or we could drive to the sea. It’s not very far.”
    “The sea sounds fantastic.”
    He gets to his feet.
    “I’ll go and get some towels.”
    All the plants in the garden have been affected by the heat. The orange nasturtiums are hanging their heads and looking limp. There’s a water shortage, you’re not