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didn’t know where to look or what to say, she was that embarrassed. It felt nice, the pressure of his hand there. Nice, and
somehow very wrong. Shameful. ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said, and took her hand and placed it over his trousers. She felt something hard there, and jerked her hand away and
sat up.
    ‘You know the facts of life, don’t you, Doll?’ he asked, sitting there on the floor staring at her. ‘You started your bleeds yet?’
    Dolly didn’t know what to say. Was he telling her she was going to bleed from somewhere, like a nosebleed maybe? Was that somehow connected to what men and women did, how they had
babies? The thought made her shudder.
    Dad put his hand on her shoulder, slid it up to caress her cheek.
    ‘You know what men and women do together, don’t you, Doll?’
    She wanted him to shut up. This was horrible. She thought of the angels in the stained-glass window of the little church, the beauty in them, the goodness. This wasn’t good. This was
awful and evil. She knew it somehow, deep in her soul.
    ‘You know the man puts his thing in the lady?’ he said, and he was whispering now, leaning closer, his breath tickling her ear.
    Dolly said nothing. She was frozen there, rigid with disgust and disbelief that her dad was saying these shocking things to her. She wanted to stand up, to run, but she was afraid he’d
stop her if she moved. Or touch her again in that bad way.
    ‘He puts his thing right in her, and it feels good,’ he said, and he was touching her hand, grasping it, bringing it back to that strange hardness at his crotch. Cringing, Dolly
tried to pull her hand free, but she couldn’t. ‘You’re my best girl,’ he said, and his voice caught as if he was breathless. ‘There. You see? It’s going to be so
good for us.’
    So, after Lucy’s birthday tea, Dolly almost ran away. As far as the rec, anyway. But Dad brought her home again, and when she got home there was Mum sitting in her chair at the kitchen
table – and Dolly thought that, while Mum was here, she was safe. Dad wouldn’t try to do the man-and-woman thing with her, not while Mum was here.

8
    Prospect, Barbados, June 1994
    Annie Carter dreamed of him again on the night it all kicked off. Constantine Barolli – the godfather. Him of the all-American tan and the armour-piercing blue eyes, the
startling white hair, the sharp suits. It was as if he was there, he was so real. Smiling at her, telling her he loved her.
    Once, long ago, Constantine could make anything right. Could make her feel enfolded, protected in the safe cocoon of his love. She turned over in the bed, her eyes opening to blackness, the last
insubstantial filaments of the dream floating away into the air around her. Her and Constantine, walking on the beach at Montauk on Long Island, the millionaires’ playground, hand in hand.
She could feel his strong grip on hers, could see the sun on his hair, the crinkling of the lines around his eyes . . . but it was fading, fading . . . and then it was gone.
He
was gone.
    Coming back to full wakefulness, Annie felt the cool blast of the aircon and she shivered, blinking, pulling the sheet over her body. She awoke to blackness, to an empty room, an empty bed. No
Max. And now, as the dream ebbed away, as she came back to herself, she thought,
No Constantine either
.
    Annie sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes, clutched at her temples.
Jesus, these dreams.
Recently she’d had them over and over again. She was with Constantine –
Constantine as he had been so long ago – they were happy, as they had been all those years ago. It was all so real,
disturbingly
real, and strange – and then she woke up and felt
bereft, abandoned, as cold reality crept back in.
    And now Max was gone too.
    Annie hauled herself up in the bed, reached over, her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness so that she could see outlines, discern dim shapes. She groped for and found the glass of water on
the