The Dhow House Read Online Free PDF Page B

that faced inland, into a stand of gauzy casuarinas. The sea held the light longer than the land. By seven it was completely dark. In England, now, there would be sunlight until nine o’clock. For the first time in months home tugged at her. She missed summer evenings when you needed sunglasses at eight o’clock in the evening.
    Julia had lit lanterns and the gin bottle lamps. The house looked most compelling at dawn and dusk. It preferred in-between times, but it needed night. When dark triumphed she could almost hear the house breathe a sigh of relief.
    Her phone blinked. 4.40am. The time when the body’s circadian clock is at its lowest ebb. The time when people died in their sleep.
    She remembered where she was. The tide sounded as if it were at the steps of the house, as if it might crash into the living room. The wind pounded the louvred windows. She got up to look outside. In the trees beyond her window she saw the huddled forms of sleeping monkeys sheltering against the wind.
    She could remember the remnant of a dream. In it, Storm was staring at her, much as he had done the previous evening, but she could remember nothing more about it.
    She was still awake an hour and a half later when a greasy dawn soaked the sky. She went to her window and saw lunkheaded clouds moving fast across the sea. The ocean was a cold jade. Geckoes slalomed headfirst down the walls, freezing mid-crawl when they sensed her gaze on them. They were mucous-hued, two black beads for eyes. She inspected the rust on the mesh protecting her from the fan’s blades, the paint drooping in buttery flakes from the ceiling.
    Her eye was drawn back to the horizon. Wherever she went in the house her eye searched for the ocean, as if she were afraid it would disappear.
    The sun had risen and the sky was carved in strata: a layer of lime near the water, then rose, then tangerine, then rose again. Over the horizon was the wedge of the Arabian peninsula and its desert cities: Dubai, Sana’a, Jeddah – those names like sheer curtains trailing across a floor. The ocean was peppered with islands – Pemba, Zanzibar – which, much further away, splintered into archipelagos: the Comoros, Seychelles, the Maldives.
    She heard the familiar grind of a helicopter. A blue-and-silver bubble appeared out of the sky from inland. She watched it chop through the rough wind parallel to the beach. She jumped up from the bed, her heart thudding. But there were no children to immunise against measles, no pulmonary oedemas to drain.
    She felt a burning take hold of her. This is the only way she could describe it – a light but insistent immolation that started on the epidermis and then moved to her core, where it boiled.
    She was in the living room, suddenly, almost running down the spiral staircase, then into the garden, still expecting to encounter a door or lock somewhere. The house’s security was its tall wall, the razored glass that studded it, the askari keeping watch at night, the alarm tripwire around the perimeter of the plot of land, and finally – and most effectively – Charlie the guard dog. Luckily for her, Charlie was kept in check by the night watchman. Still she heard his stiff barks as she crossed the garden.
    She walked the length of the beach in the opal morning light. Its sands were littered with pearl-like flower petals. She picked one up. It had an oblong chamber, made of gristle the colour of milk.
    She returned to the house. Sounds were coming from the kitchen. There was something about their urgency that didn’t sound like Julia, who moved quietly, almost regally.
    Suddenly a man was walking towards her and she only had time for an emergency impression to form – but he’s not so much older! – before she found herself shaking her uncle’s hand. His grip had a vigour she recognised from the military men she had treated. Bruise-coloured veins snarled his forearms. He had a flared jaw like the bottom of glass soda bottles, and Storm’s