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in the Craft Centre,’ Jim Davy said. ‘We’ll teach the students to make an urn like that.’)
    I get these flashes of fear, they last as long as the shadow from a chopper’s blade, and it suddenly comes to me that Sanjay is walking towards me with news of disaster. Is there a war starting up? What can he see, from the verandah of his wooden house where you can stare and stare and you won’t see anything until you get to the coast of South America? He could see a fleet all right, steaming up to fight out a bloody Falklands on our beaches. But the British don’t want anything to do with protecting St James. When we were made ‘independent’ (what a laugh), along with St Jude to the north, and a chinless member of the Royal Family came – he was trying to grow a beard, I remember, the sweat of the tropics came through the pathetic straggle of hair – what a fuss Duchess Dora made! Oh, the tea on the lawn! a steel band, even. It was embarrassing. But they don’t want anything further to do with us. The fighting’ll be between the Cubans and the Americans. I see it in my dreams and then the Russians fly in in planes from dark skies heavy with snow.
    *
    ‘Holly!’ I hear. I go into the store, it’s time I served Millie, after all, because her basket is full with those extra trimmings Mrs Van der Pyck needs for tonight. ‘You going to dinner up there?’ Millie says, and I shake my head and we both laugh. We’ll be sick-drunk together later, no one is stopped from going into the Coconut Bar. In a comic-strip show of equality and comradeship, the Americans and Venezuelans will dance with the villagers from St James and the funny hats will go on and we’ll all be happy as the night is long. Mrs Van der Pyck will make her annual pass at Sanjay, who will slip away before the end. Jim Davy dressed as Santa Claus. ‘What are you giving us this year, Santa, to keep us good?’ But Jim Davy’s nothere, and that’s one of the reasons I suspect bad news.
    Now I’m back in the store I see the girl from the yacht has an impatient look. She’s swum over with a wad of dollars tucked in her hair and she’s laid them out on the counter.
    What is she trying to prove? And now I find there’s a lump in my throat. It’s fear again. Because every day this place gets more and more like a re-run of an American TV serial. I just expect her to pull a gun – and point it at me. Steady on, Holly, I say to myself as I add up Millie’s shopping on the ancient cash register.
    ‘Going away on holiday this year?’ I say to Millie, to keep up the seasonal running joke between us. And Millie laughs – that slow, rumbling laugh that makes you feel quite cheered up until you remember you’re stuck on an undefended island only four miles from Grenada.
    ‘Just the usual little skiing holiday,’ she says. ‘In Switzerland .’ And we both laugh together, while the girl stands staring at us in open contempt. A couple of old bats, you can see her thinking about us. And I think back, well, dear, you’ll just have to wait your turn to get served. As if we were in one of those crummy streets in West London where you see girls looking like this one, and not on an island that might be blown up any minute and the pieces scattered as far as Trinidad.
    *
    Lore was the one who wrote and told me the news, that Christmas after Teza vanished with Ford. (They’d gone to Union Island in the fisherman’s boat, it was later revealed, and had a lobster dinner and spent the night in the one battered hotel.) It was the first time Ford had left St James. By the time they got on the big plane to London in Barbados his eyes were nearly popping out of his head.
    ‘It’s cradle-snatching,’ Lore said. ‘But he is rather sweet. Do you know, he even writes poems and reads them aloud to Teza’s friends? No one dares to laugh, of course. Teza’sbought this little house near the Portobello Road. She seems quite happy, but she’s restless really. Something