He waited. When I said nothing, he sighed.

"She called at the beginning of August, and she sounded happy. So now you're probably thinking: Tammy met someone and decided to leave me. After all, it wouldn't be the first time she's seen other men, would it? No, you don't have to answer that."

The bottle in his hands turned round and round.

"The thing is, you see, I know Tammy; I know who she is, what she's like. I know you don't like her, and you're not the only one. But I love her anyway. Maybe I'm a foolish man, but there it is. So I gave her the ring. I can't help hoping that one day she'll look at that ring, she'll recall I have money in the bank and I've promised to take care of her, and love her, and she'll think, You know, maybe Dornan isn't so bad, and she'll come home and marry me."

He drank, wiped his mouth, remembered me and passed the bottle.

"She was so happy when she called. Do you know what that's like? That she was happy with someone else? But I've been through it before--she drops them as quickly as she picks them up, and she always comes home. But it's different this time--never lasted as long before, for one thing. For another, she didn't give me an address, or a phone number. And she hasn't called again. It's been two months. That's not like her."

Dornan's voice was an irritant. The need to push him away was becoming harder to ignore.

"I tried directory assistance. Unlisted, they said. So I went to the police. They wouldn't help me: they don't have the time to go chasing down every woman who leaves her boyfriend."

I drank some more. Irish whiskey, even the illegal kind, has a rough beginning but a smooth end, quite unlike most Scotch whiskeys. Which would Julia have preferred?

"Those first few weeks in Florida she couldn't stop talking about this Geordie Karp and his bloody mall. 'Geordie this, Geordie that.' You'd have thought he was god himself. On and on, then nothing."

I should really put some more wood on the fire.

"This silence isn't like her. Something's happened. I just don't know what." He ran a hand through his hair. Waited. "Well, say something."

I added a log, pinewood that spat as the resin ignited. The flames burned more yellow.

"Aud, listen. Please. Julia is dead, yes, and I'm sorry for it. Sorry you had to see her shot, and sorry you had to watch her linger. Probably you think you should have been able to protect her, but--don't you see? That's how I feel about Tammy."

If I closed my eyes, I could pretend he wasn't there.

"Will you help?"

All my filters were gone. Everything was too big, too loud, too sharp. The squeal of brakes, a bright shirt, the stink of plastic: everything got in and I could sort none of it out.

"I can't," I said. "I'm not-- I can't."

"Ah, Aud...." He scrambled unsteadily to his feet, arms open.

"Don't. Don't come near me."

I didn't want his friendship. I didn't want to be connected. Never again. Stay in the world, Aud. Before I met her, everything had been so clear, so simple, but she had made me aware how alive and complex the world and the people in it were. And then she died, and now I couldn't shut that awareness out again, couldn't make it go away, and nothing made sense apart from this cabin. I could look at the wood I had hewn, the shingles I'd split and the pegs I'd hammered, and know what they meant and that they were real.

Stay alive inside. Promise me.

"If you could just--"

"No."

A log broke open in a spume of orange sparks, and flames began to gnaw at the tilted remnants.

I upended the bottle, swallowed the last of the whiskey, and dropped the empty on the grass. The silence lasted a long time. The flames ate their way inch by inch to both ends of the broken log, and began to die.

"It'll be winter soon," he said, finally. "You won't be able to work on the house in the snow."

"Once the roof's finished and the windows are in, it's all indoor work."

"Look, I know you hurt, but you'll hurt for years. You can't stay up here that long."

"I could stay here forever."

He studied me; his eyes reflected black, with tiny orange flames. "But you won't?"

I didn't say anything.

"We all worry."

I looked at him.

He nodded. "Helen and Mick, Beatriz, Eddie, Annie."

Annie, weeping by her daughter's bed as the words echoed around that white room: cerebral haemorrhage, massive brain trauma, we'll give you a moment with her. All because of one bullet, a piece of metal an inch long. And now I was here, and she was dead, and Dornan was alive, and Tammy: alive and walking around, laughing, breathing while Julia was dead.