My hand’s over my mouth. “Jesus. You sawthis?”

“From ten feet away. The murderer said, ‘Any more heroes?’ Then a gun went off and the guard went down, and total bloody anarchy broke out, and the Jackdaws realized we weren’t quite the doddery old farts they’d expected. Someone shot out the headlamps on the van. It was too dark to know who was where, what was what, and”—Brendan’s chest’s heaving—“I ran into the tomato polytunnel, where a Jackdaw came pounding at me, waving a machete, I thought … And my .38 was suddenly in my hand with the safety off, a bang sounded, and something skidded into me … His mask’d come away, somehow, and I saw—I saw he was a boy, younger than Lorelei. The machete was a garden trowel. And”—Brendan controls his voice—“I shot him, Hol. Straight through the heart.”

My brother’s trembling and his face is shining, and a memory comes to me of a woman lying at a crossroads in an impossible labyrinth with her head staved in and a marble rolling pin dropping from my hand. I manage to say, “Under the circumstances …”

“I know. I thought it was him or me and some reflex kicked in. I dug his grave myself, at least. That’s a lot of earth to shift, at my age. We got four of them, they got six of us, plus Harry McKay’s boy, who’s in a bad way with a punctured lung. There’s a clinic in Exmouth, but care standards are pretty Middle Ages, by all accounts.”

“Bren, if you can’t come here, perhaps I could try to—”

“No!”For the first time Brendan looks afraid. “For your sake, for Lol’s sake, for Rafiq’s sake, for God’s sake stay put. Traveling’s too dangerous now, unless you’ve ten armed men willing to kill, and Sheep’s Head Peninsula’s probably the safest place in western Europe. When Pearl Occident first leased the West Cork coastal strip I thought, What a humiliation for the Paddies, but at least you’ve still got law and order there, of sorts. At least—”

Brendan’s features freeze in midsyllable, as if the wind changed direction just as he pulled a weird face. “Brendan? Can you hear me?” Nothing. I groan with frustration and Zimbra looks up, worried. I try rethreading, I try resetting my tab, I try waiting. I didn’t even ask if he’d heard from Sharon in Australia, but now the coverage has gone and something tells me it won’t be coming back.

UP IN MY room, I can’t get to sleep. Shadows bloom in the corners, swaying a little against darker darkness. The wind’s risen, the roof creaks, the sea booms. What Brendan said is on imperfectly remembered, nonstop shuffle repeat: I think of better things to say, calming things, but as usual it’s too late. My big brother, the onetime multimillionaire property developer, looked so hollowed out and so fragile. I envy the God-intoxicated Boyces of the world. Prayer may be a placebo for the disease of helplessness, but placebos can make you feel better. At the end of my garden the sound of waves dies and gives birth to the sound of waves, forever and ever, Amen. Across the corridor, Rafiq says something in his sleep, quite loud and afraid and in Arabic. I get up, go to his room, and say, “You okay, Raf?” but he’s asleep and mumbling, so I go back to my warm bed. My stomach makes a buried squeal. Once upon a time “my body” meant “me,” pretty much, but now “me” is my mind and my body is a selection box of ailments and aches. My molar throbs, the pain in my right side is jaggedy, rheumatism rusts my knuckles and knees, and if my body was a car I’d have traded it in, years ago. But my small, late, unexpected family—me, Lorelei, Rafiq, Zimbra, and Mo—will last only as long as my body functions. The O’Dalys would look after the kids as best they could, I know, but the world is getting worse, not better. I’ve seen the future and it’s hungry.

My fingers find Jacko’s silver labyrinth, looped on its cord over my bedpost, and I press it against my forehead. The pattern of its walls, passageways, and junctions cools my hot brain down a bit. “I doubt you survived,” I murmur to any real angel, to any surviving Horologist, “so I doubt you’ll hear me. But let me be wrong. Give me one final abracadabra. Two golden apples, if you can spare them. Get the kids out of here, somewhere safe, if anywhere is safe. Please.”

October 28

MY OLD CURTAIN FILTERS the early rose-orange sun, but it’s cold rose-orange, not warm rose-orange. The wind and waves sound busy this morning, rather than relentless, like last night. I hear Zimbra coming up the stairs, and here he is, nosing his way into my room and wagging his tail to say good morning. Strange how he always knows when I’m awake. I’m aware I’ve forgotten something, something deeply unpleasant. What was it? Brendan. I wonder how he is this morning. I hope he’s being looked after. Only five years ago I could have booked myself a seat on an airplane, driven to the airport, flown over to Bristol, and within the hour been at Tintagel Gated Village. Now it’s like a trip to the moon …

What can’t be helped can’t be helped. I’ve jobs to be doing. I get out of bed like an old lady, carefully, open the curtains and open my window. Dunmanus Bay’s still a bit choppy, but I see a sailboat—probably Aileen Jones, out checking her lobster pots. The sea holly and myrtle at the end of the garden are being buffeted; back they bend towards the cottage, then spring up, then bend back towards the cottage. This means something. Something I’m missing, even though it’s there in front of me, as plain as day.

It’s an east wind, blowing from England; from Hinkley Point.

RADIO POC ISN’T broadcasting this morning; there’s just a looped message saying the station is off the air today for operational reasons. So I switch to JKFM and leave it playing the Modern Jazz Quartet as I quarter an apple for my breakfast and heat up a couple of potato cakes for Rafiq. Soon he smells the garlic and clops down the stairs in his makeshift dressing gown and he tells me about a zipwire some of the older village boys are planning up in Five Acre Wood. After we’ve eaten I feed the chickens, water the pumpkins in the polytunnel, make a few days’ worth of dog biscuits from oats, husk, and mutton fat, and sharpen the hair scissors while Rafiq cleans our drinking-water tub, refills it by taking the long hosepipe up to the spring, then goes down to the pier with his fishing rod. Zimbra joins him. Later he comes back with a pollack and a mackerel. Rafiq has bits of memories of fishing in sunny blue water before he came to Ireland, he says, and Declan O’Daly says the boy’s a natural angler—luckily for his and Lorelei’s diet, as they only eat meat once a month, at most. I’ll bake the fish for dinner tonight, and serve them up with mashed swede. I make a pot of mint tea and start cutting Rafiq’s hair. He’s long overdue a trim and it’ll be headlice season at school soon. “I saw Aileen Jones through my telescope earlier,” he says. “Out on the bay in the Lookfar, checking her lobster pot.”

“That’s great,” I say, “but I hope you were careful—”

“—not to point it at the sun,” he says. “ ’Course I didn’t, Holly. I’m not a total doofus, y’know?”

“Nobody’s saying you’re even a partial doofus,” I tell him mildly. “It’s just once you’re a parent, a sort of … accident detector switches on, and never switches off. You’ll see, one day, if you’re ever a father.”

“Euuuyyyuckh”is what Rafiq thinks of that prospect.

“Hold still. Lol should be doing this. She’s the better stylist.”

“No way! Lol’d make me look like a boy in Five-star Chongqing.”

“Like a boy in what?”

“Five-star Chongqing. They’re Chinese. All the girls fancy them.”

And dream dreams of lives of plenty in Shanghai, I don’t doubt. They say there are only two women to every three men in China ’cause of selective feticide, and when the Lease Lands were new and buses still ran to Cork, my relatives there told me about local girls being recruited as “China brides” and sailing away to full stomachs, 24/7 electricity, and Happy Ever After. I was old enough to have my doubts about the recruiting agencies’ testimonials. I switch the radio from JKFM to RTЙ in case there’s a report about Hinkley, which went unmentioned on the eight A.M. news. Zimbra comes and puts his head on Rafiq’s lap and looks up at the boy. Rafiq musses his head. The RTЙ announcer reads the birth notices, where people thread the program the names of new babies, birthweights, the parents’ names, parishes, and counties. I like hearing them. Christ knows these kids’ lives won’t be easy, especially for the majority who are born beyond the Pale or the Cork Cordon, but each name feels like a tiny light held up against the Endarkenment.