'Well, apart from him-'

'I mean, he's even spoken up for you in the past; when all this crazy obsessive stalking stuff started.'

'What crazy obsessive stalking stuff?' I cried. 'What are you talking about?' I was feeling terribly emotional; there was a prickling behind my eyes.  Sophi, sitting on the couch in her dressing-gown, looked concerned and slightly alarmed too.

'For God's sake, Isis; all the letters; asking me for-'

'What letters?'

'Isis, are you having black-outs or something?  All the letters you've sent me, pledging undying love; sending me your knickers; asking me for my used knickers, for God's sake-'

'What?' I screeched.  Sophi flinched and glanced upwards.  She put her finger to her lips.

'Morag,' I said. 'You have to… Look, I mean, I… I like you; I always have… I'm, that is… we're friends, as… as well as cousins… but I don't have a crush on you or anything; I'm not obsessive about you.  Please believe me; I haven't sent any sort of letter for about four years, soon after you started sending the open letters, to everybody, when you got busy, with; well, at the time we thought it was playing the baryton, but I suppose it was, um, actually the, ah, films really, but-'

'Don't lie, Isis,' she began, then broke off. '… Wait a minute,' she said. 'What do you mean, "films"?'

I grimaced.  Sophi returned the look as though reflecting my feeling of embarrassment.  I cleared my throat. 'As, ah, Fusillada; you know.'

There was a long pause. 'Ah, Morag?' I said, thinking she had somehow rung off silently.

'You do know about that,' she said, sounding wary.

'Yes,' I said. 'I… Well, it's another long story, I suppose, but-'

'Allan just told me you hadn't found out,' she said flatly.

I caught a sniff of victory. 'That's what I'm telling you; Allan's a liar!' I said.

'How many people know about the films?'

'Well… everybody,' I confessed.

'Oh, shit.'

'Look, Morag, I don't think there's anything wrong in what you're doing.  It's your body and you can do what you want with it, and the act of love is holy under any circumstances unless there is coercion involved; commercial exploitation is irrelevant in that respect and the reaction of Unsaved society is largely a result of its deep-seated fear of the power of sexuality and the repressed-'

'Is, Is… yeah, right; got all that.  Jeez, you're sounding like some girl on the game who's just got an Open University degree.'

'Sorry.'

'It's all right.  But none of this explains why you were chasing me round the fucking country in the first place.'

'I told you; I was on a mission!'

'For what?'

'To talk you back into the fold of the Saved and restore your faith in the Order.'

'Eh?'

I repeated what I'd just said.

'What are you talking about?'

'Morag; I saw the letter you sent.'

'What letter?'

'The one you wrote two weeks ago where you said you didn't want to be part of the Order or take part in the Festival; the one where you said you had found another faith.'

Morag laughed. 'Hold on, hold on.  I wrote ages ago saying I wasn't coming to the Festival, after I started getting the weird letters from you.  But I haven't written in a couple of months.  As for finding some new faith, I know I'm not the best Luskentyrian in the world, but I'm not lapsed or anything.'

I stared at Sophi.  She looked back, her expression half trepidatious, half hopeful.

'So,' I said into the telephone. 'Somebody's been sending both of us faked - forged - letters.'

'Yeah, if all this isn't you being a really clever stalker,' she said, but didn't sound serious. 'Oops; I'm getting battery low showing here.  You got any other bombshells you want to drop?'

'I don't think so,' I said. 'But look, can I meet you?  Can we talk some more about this?  Wherever you want.'

'Well, I don't know.  I heard from Allan you were going to stay with Uncle Mo…'

'What's that got to do with anything?  Look, I'll come to Essex, or London; anywhere.  But I'm not stalking you, for goodness' sake…'

'Well, the thing is, as you were going to be heading south - well, the north of England - but you know what I mean, and as we're stalled here with Frank's… ah, business dealings-'

'Ah yes.  The VAT problems,' I nodded.

'How do you- ?  Oh, never mind.' I heard her take a breath. 'Okay, look; yes, we'll meet, but I'm going to bring Ricky - the cute guy you saw at the house?'

'With Tyson.'

That's right.  And it'll be a public place, okay?'

'Fine by me.'

'Right.  Well, the thing is, we're going to be in Edinburgh tomorrow.'

'Edinburgh!' I exclaimed.

'Believe it or not.'

'Why?'

'It's a long story.  Let's meet at the Royal Commonwealth Pool, right?'

'Royal Commonwealth Pool,' I repeated.  Across from me, Sophi looked surprised.

'Afternoon okay?' Morag asked.

'Perfect.'

'Three o'clock?'

'I'll be there.  Shall I bring my costume?'

'Yes; we'll be at the flumes.'

'The whats?'

'The flumes.'

I frowned. 'Isn't that a thing they send logs down in the Canadian north-west?'

'Originally, Is, yes.  God, you really are out of touch up there, aren't you?'

'And proud of it,' I said, feeling relatively cheerful for the first time in days.

'Nothing changes,' Morag sighed. 'Oh, and look, you won't be saying anything to Allan in the meantime, will you?'

'Absolutely not.'

'Right.  Same here.  See you tomorrow, then.'

'Indeed.  Tomorrow.  Goodbye, cuz.'

'Bye.' The phone clicked off.

I put down the handset and grinned at Sophi.  I took her hands in mine and watched with joy as her face gradually lost all traces of worry and doubt and bloomed into a beautiful broad smile, expressing what I felt.

I laughed quietly. 'Light at the end of the tunnel,' I said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

'It is dreams, you see, Isis.  Dreams.' Uncle Mo took another drink from his little plastic tumbler, nodding to himself as he watched the grass, cliffs and sea slide past our window. 'Dreams can be terrible things.  Oh yes.  Terrible, terrible things.'

'I thought they were called nightmares when they were like that,' I said.

Uncle Mo laughed in a watery way and leaned over the table to me, patting me on the forearm. 'Ah, Isis, bless you, child, you are so young.  You see things so simply but that clarity is gone from me.  This is what life does, what dreams do.  You are not to know how terrible dreams can be.  I,' he said, tapping himself softly on his waistcoated chest, 'I am not old; I am not an old man.  I am in my middle ages, no more.  But I have lived enough for an old man's memories.  I could be old for all that matters.  Ah, dreams.'

'I see,' I said, not seeing at all.

The train banked round a fast corner, tipping us towards the view of red-cliffed coastline and fractured rocks washed by a lazy, ruffled sea.  On the pale blue horizon a grey speck was a ship.  The sky was swathed in quiet layers of pastel cloud.

We were on the eleven o'clock train from Edinburgh to London King's Cross, due to change at York for Manchester.  I was supposed to meet Morag at three in Edinburgh and right now I was heading south for England, getting further and further away from my cousin all the time.  I had thought seriously about giving Uncle Mo the slip in Waverley station, and had worked out a plan to do just that, but I had changed my mind.  I had another plan now.  The timing was a little tight and there was no guarantee of its success anyway, but I judged it worth the effort and the risk.

'Dreams,' Uncle Mo said, unscrewing the top of another miniature bottle of vodka and tipping the bottle's contents into his plastic tumbler.  He added a little soda from a larger bottle, shaking his head in time as he shook the miniature, forcing the last few drops out of it. 'Dreams… dreams of ambition, dreams of success… are terrible, my lovely niece, because they sometimes come true, and that is the most awful of things for a man to suffer.'