MORNING SERIAL
AS we walked he said, “They have gone to a secret place, much more secret than here; a place where even if you knew it existed you would not follow them.”
“Where?”
“A ghost city.”
“They have gone to Famagusta?”
He looked at me. “You have heard of it?”
“It’s been explained to me.” He curled his lip again and bobbed his head. “Interesting choice of words.” “What?”
“That you have it explained to you. And who explained it? Your waitress?”
I suddenly felt as if things were falling away from me, as if I had been sure I was existing on the edges of a drama, when in fact all along it had been happening all around me.
“Viktor told you about Lou?” I asked calmly. We were almost at the door of the tower by this point.
“Paint for me,” Illie said, and lifted his arm out to the doorway.
He ushered me inside the tower and spoke whilst remaining outside. “I know you are a friend to me,” he said. “And after what happened last night there was a great deal to think about. But now I have done my thinking. You may be able to help with Famagusta. Paint for now, and we will talk more tomorrow.”
He closed the door on me, and the silence of the room combined with the pulsing heat of the place pressed on me hard. I felt too nauseous to even look at the paint and its sweet smell was too strong. I wanted to call Clare, but what was there to say? It was clear to me that our problems were now separate ones; just as they had converged when we had, now they diverged as we came to terms with the splitting of our single self. That loneliness was the harshest winter of all the weather of our separation. The realisation I would have to be miserable in silence, on my own.
And this was not simply misery, it was an inability to force defiance into the real space before me.
Helplessness.
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com