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His whole life had been based between London and New York, but what had happened next was that he’d stopped being able to fly—scared to death, crying like a child, bundled off the plane in a wheelchair—unless he was knocked out like an elephant being airlifted from the savannah, “and I was an elephant by then, too, twice the size I am now.” He rubbed his ribs and belly.

“The talent didn’t like it, they need their guy on the ground, they want to feel like they’re the only one with problems. The wife didn’t like it, having me at home all the time.

I drank more, I ate more, I stopped going out.

The boys were getting to the end of their schooling; it was time for me to choose where to die.

I chose England. I sold the business, gave the money to the boys, said goodbye to the wife, and moved into this place.

” He had tears in his long black lashes.

“But you didn’t die, did you?” Daniel said sweetly.

Barbie passed the back of his hand over his eyes. “Nope! Fifty-six now. Fit and well. Married to the love of my life. I never thought I’d see it.”

He clasped Dan’s hand and they leaned their heads together.

Humbled, Coralie and Adam held hands too.

“How did you manage the flight to Australia?” Adam asked.

“Drugged to my fuckin’ gills.”

“Speaking of…” Dan murmured.

Coralie pulled her phone out of her pocket. Well past ten. They’d told Miss Camilla they’d be back no later than eleven. “Oh, we should—”

“I’ve made something lovely and special,” Dan said.

“You’ll love this,” Barbie said.

Dan went over to the drinks cabinet and returned carrying a silver salver with ten perfect chocolate balls balanced on top. “I’m still experimenting…” he started to say.

The little poodle, who’d been snoozing on a kilim cushion, trembled, arched her back, sprang to her feet, whined, and spun in a circle.

“Ah,” Barbie said. “Madonna needs to cut a record. I’ll take her out the back.

Don’t wait for me. Come on, luvvie. Come on.

” Madonna followed him into the hall. They could hear the bolts on the back door click and slide.

“Dan,” Adam said. “I mean, what a triumph. The meal, the house, the love story. But we still don’t know how you met?”

“He kept coming into the restaurant and asking for the chef’s table. That’s when you sit in the kitchen with me, and I feed you bits and bobs. After a while, I said it might be easier, and cheaper, just to ask me on a date. So he did.”

“You’re a great cook, it must be said.” With a single fluid motion, Adam flipped a chocolate into his mouth.

Daniel started to speak but his words were drowned out by a horrifying cry, a guttural roar of fear and outrage. They all leaped to their feet. “Barbie!” Dan cried.

At the back of the hall, they were confronted by a ghastly sight. Barbie was cradling a shivering Madonna in his arms, blood pouring down his face and even into his eyes from a long, deep scratch on his bald head. “She’s okay,” Barbie said. “She’s okay.”

Daniel burst into tears.

Barbie lowered Madonna to the floor. She put her nose down and ran back toward her kilim. “A fuckin’ fox in the garden. Got the dog in his jaws, right around her neck. I had to prize them open like…” He wildly mimed pulling them apart. “She’s okay, she’s okay, that’s my blood, not hers.”

“Did it bite you? Barbie!” Coralie said. “You’ll get rabies.”

Barbie leaned over with his hands on his knees. “It’s all from my head. The fox ran away, then I stood up and scalped myself on a fuckin’ tree. Jesus Christ. Oh, hey.” Daniel fell into his embrace. “Hey.”

“I’m going to make tea.” Coralie took Adam by the elbow. “Come on, we’ll make the tea.”

“We’ll go upstairs and clean up. Won’t we?” Barbie said gently to Dan, who nodded.

In the kitchen, Adam brought the chocs over to where Coralie was boiling the kettle. He leaned back against the bench and ate another one with a groan of intense pleasure. “Have some,” he said. “Your brother’s amazing.”

Coralie bit into one. It was hard on the outside but soft inside. There was a strange quality to the taste. “Remember when we bought that coffee blend from Climpsons? The weird one?”

“The tasting notes said vegetal ,” Adam said. “It was like drinking the canal.”

“That’s what this tastes like, but in a nice way. Is it bad to have another one?”

“I don’t think so? There were ten, and four of us?”

She popped another choc in her mouth and pushed the silver tray away. “That blood was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in a private home.”

“I never want to hear a scream like that for the rest of my days.”

“I kept trying to see how deep the scalping had been. Was it a flap?”

“It wasn’t a flap ,” Adam said. “A flap!” he suddenly operatically sang. “Head wounds bleed like mad. I found that out at school when I walked into a fence.”

Coralie poured hot water over the leaves in the teapot. They made a crinkling sound, then were drowned. Weird, she felt a bit sorry for them. “Poor Barbie’s the injured one, and he’s up there looking after Dan,” she said. “He should be in hospital, getting stitches and a tetanus shot.”

“Maybe we should leave them to it,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t mind a tea, though.”

They started their teas. No sign of their hosts. Coralie checked her phone. “Past eleven, poor Miss Camilla. I’m going to creep up and say goodbye.”

“Dan?” she called. “Barbie?”

They weren’t in the library. In the hall, she mounted the stairs to the top floor, the floor she hadn’t seen yet.

She became aware of a low murmur, a deep rumbling sound, that could only be intimate and private.

Something drove her to find its source. In the acid-green front bedroom, Barbie lay on the massive bed like a pharaoh, towel around his waist like a skirt.

The long scrape on his bald head was clean but looked quite sore.

Dan was cuddled up to him, his eyes closed, face resting on Big Man’s rising and falling chest.

“To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear!” Barbie said. “To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.”

He was reading from Watership Down .

Coralie backed out silently and tiptoed down the stairs.

···

The walk home was strange, like she was inside Google Maps, clicking herself farther and farther down the road. “Don’t you feel like you’re in Street View?” She turned to Adam. “Clicking along the road.”

“But on Street View you don’t see the stars.”

“No, you’re right, I can see them,” she said. “In the sky.”

Inside, Miss Camilla had the vacant eyes and messed-up hair of someone on a long-haul flight. Coralie pressed a wad of cash into her hand. “You’re wonderful,” she urged. “You’re a wonderful person.”

Upstairs, Flo was on her tummy, her mouth a perfect O where her thumb had slipped out.

On the top floor, Zora had fallen asleep with her night-light on.

It had been years since she’d seen the stars and planets slowly revolving on the ceiling.

Coralie stared up. A tremor of pure delight ran through her at the shadows made by her hands in the flickering light: flowers, birds, bees, just like the insect wallpaper at Big Man’s house.

She ran a bath, undressed, and watched the water pour from the taps.

Steam billowed; the mirror fogged over. The window at Railroad, when she’d first told Adam about Richard.

The waterfall plunging to the pool at Florence Falls.

She sent a picture to Adam, to see if he remembered too.

Before the two ticks had turned blue, he was in the bathroom with her.

“Did you see it?” she said. “Did you get it?”

“Your sext? I certainly did.”

It wasn’t a sext, but she could see how he’d made that mistake—she could see everything and suddenly realized there were no mistakes, that nothing and no one was inherently wrong and nothing and no one was inherently bad. “So funny,” she said. “I love you.”

She lay on the bed in her towel. Adam unwrapped her like a present.

After a while, a realization dawned on her, literally rose in her mind like the sun: What if she could penetrate him ?

On top, she incorporated his penis inside her, where it became part of her body, and as she moved she focused on the sensation she imagined at the base, roots like tree roots, where the forest meets the sea, all the nerve fibers, electrical pulses, phosphorescent sea creatures, tendrils trailing.

“You’re inside me,” he said. “You’re stirring me. ”

They came, but she didn’t want to separate. “Don’t pull out,” she said. “You’re part of me.” They rolled extremely carefully onto their sides, still attached, facing each other.

“Why did you bring Zora’s night-light in?” she asked after a while.

“I didn’t,” he said. “Where has the roof gone?”

···

Weeks later, Daniel still felt bad about the shroom truffles. But Coralie didn’t. She was pregnant.