II

Next door, Knox had also slept poorly. He’d expected Titch to take a room for himself, but he’d been able to hear him and Rebecca preparing for bed then talking through the wall, though their conversation had been too muffled for him to make out what they were saying. It gave him a twinge anyway to think of the two of them together, for it had been obvious from the first that Titch was infatuated with Rebecca, and that she was fond of him too, though it had been less clear how fond. They finally fell silent, except for the creak of bed-joints as they tossed and turned, sounds that he found equally disturbing.

It came as a relief, therefore, when it finally grew light enough outside for him to be able to drive. He rose, paid for his room, then pushed his bike out on to the road so as not to wake the other guests when he started it up. A yellow dog dozed against a yellow wall, as if using it as camouflage. A family of four wobbled by on a ramshackle bicycle, the father standing up on the pedals, the mother sitting side-saddle nursing an infant, a boy balanced precariously upon the handlebars, giggling joyously. For a few miles, the road was busy with smallholders carting produce to Tulear’s markets, but soon he was beyond them and making quick progress, slaloming the track’s pitfalls. He passed a paradise beach, the golden sand bevelled by footprints and scarred by the broken husks of old pirogues. The sun rose above the trees, grew warm. By the side of the road, two men sawed up an old truck tyre to make sandals. Everything had residual value here; everything was squeezed dry. A young boy dragging a snow-white goat by its hind leg grinned and waved. He waved back. Then he saw Pierre’s cabins ahead, a concrete reminder of the revelation that had been haunting him these past twenty-four hours, that he was quite possibly a father. It was an extraordinary thing, like discovering a new dimension in the world. He told himself to drive on, that this was no time for distractions, that his job was to check Eden for ransom updates. Yet he found himself turning off the track up towards Pierre’s house all the same.

The noise of his arrival brought Pierre to the door. ‘Yes?’ he asked. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have a message for Therese,’ he said. ‘From Rebecca.’

‘Tell me. I’ll pass it on.’

‘It’s personal,’ said Knox. ‘She asked me to give it to Therese myself.’

He scowled but went inside. A minute passed. Therese came to the door carrying an infant in her arms, its face to her chest so that Knox couldn’t see. His heart gave a double thump all the same; he beckoned Therese to follow him out of sight and earshot.

‘Yes?’ she asked.

Now that the moment was upon him, Knox didn’t know quite how to proceed. ‘Is that Emilia’s son?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she said warily.

‘So that would make him Pierre’s?’

Therese didn’t say anything at first. She looked instead at his face, as if assessing his state of knowledge, his intent. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Why you ask me this?’

‘I knew Emilia,’ he told her. ‘We became close when she came to England. Very close. Maybe she mentioned me?’

Therese’s eyes watered a little, but happily. She wiped a finger beneath them. ‘I think it must be you,’ she said. ‘When Rebecca tell me this Englishman is here, with scars upon his back …’

‘It’s me.’ He nodded at Michel. ‘So he’s mine?’ he asked.

She seemed to hesitate, as though still bound by some vow of confidentiality; but the situation had gone beyond that, and she must have realised it. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s yours.’ She held him out. Knox took him in both hands and raised him up a little awkwardly, as though he’d just been presented with some undeserved trophy. Therese was talking rapidly; he didn’t take in a word of it, too numbed by those big brown eyes. Michel’s face clenched as though he was about to start bawling; but then he thought better of it, he looked up and away, as though mildly puzzled by some anomaly in the world. Knox saw his sister in him, then, and his father too. And in that moment, accepting Michel as his responsibility, all the dead tissue around his heart was simply excised and thrown away, allowing what remained to breathe freely again. He remembered a simple truth he’d somehow forgotten in the loss of Gaille: that life was only worth living when it was lived for someone else. His vendetta against the Nergadzes was instantly over; they just weren’t worth it. And he realised, too, that his first duty now was to find Emilia, one way or another. Everything else could wait.

He passed Michel back to Therese. ‘I have things to do,’ he told her. ‘Will you look after him a little longer?’

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything.’

She nodded and headed back to the house, carrying Michel against her shoulder. He walked with them and watched them safely back inside. Then he straddled his bike and turned it towards Eden, profoundly aware that his old life was over, and a new one had begun.