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have the sofa with its back to the view. In the end they had compromised and the sofa presently stood at right angles to the window.
    Opposite the sofa was an old pine sideboard. On top of it were gathered all the old family photos. Mabbut’s eye fell on them now. In one Sam, eight or nine maybe, was being squeezed by Krystyna, with Jay on her other knee, pouting stagily. Next to this photograph, in a silver frame badly in need of a polish, was a more formal study: Krystyna in a long black dress at the Dorchester, arm tight around him as he clutched the phallic plastic flame that was the British Gas Award for Environmental Journalism. Behind that, as if in the background, was a picture of Rita and Graham, his mother and father, taken on one of their trips.
    When his dad had retired from what used to be called the Egg Marketing Board Rita had galvanised him into action. They had become role models for the Saga generation: walking the Pennine Way, the Pembroke Coast Path and Offa’s Dyke in the same year. Maybe she’d known there was a problem ahead, but she never let onand appeared to be as shocked as they all were when his father’s illness was discovered. In his last year this sparky, irritable man was reduced to being a spectator of his own decline. With his sister Lucy in Australia, the filial responsibility had fallen almost entirely to Mabbut. Ironically, he’d been inspired by his parents’ sense of adventure to try to see more of the world himself. But just when his agent landed him a juicy, reputation-restoring commission from the Sunday Times to cover the Arianca dam project in Argentina his dad had entered the last, long-drawn-out stages of his cancer. There could be no question of his leaving home. Looking back now, it was not his father’s death as much as his mother’s sudden, completely unexpected deterioration soon afterwards that cost Mabbut the momentum he needed, and sent him instead into the arms of big business.
    He stared for a while at Rita and Graham. They smiled back at him, the hoods of their anoraks ever so slightly raised by the breeze. They both wore expressions of such irrepressible cheerfulness that he allowed himself to feel a pang of jealousy that they had come through their working lives to find such a place of contentment.

THREE
     
    T he next morning, much to his surprise, Mabbut awoke without any of his usual anxieties; his mind was clear and he felt an extraordinary sense of liberation. Duty done, money earned, he was at last free to begin what really mattered to him. What, at some deeply needy level, had mattered to him since he had first looked at a book. To write stories. To be a writer of fiction. This was the first day of a new life, the day when an imagination cooped up for far too long could break free at last.
    Mabbut’s story was based on the premise that when man first emerged from Africa a tribe had split from the rest and mated with the very last of a line of trans-terrestrial beings. They had adapted so well to their surroundings that in a few generations they had developed an extraordinary and sophisticated way of life, and as they were far from the main migratory routes they were able to build a sort of prehistoric Shangri La, safe, secure, harmonious and progressive. This was the land of Albana, where a moral code based on co-operation and conciliation had evolved and where violence had no place. Then came the day when this haven was discovered by the outside world and the people of Albana had to learn cunning and cruelty to survive. They became, in time, a feared and destructive people. But two or three escaped and made their way through astonishing perils to keep alive the Ancient Truths, the arcane knowledge of Albana.
    In his tiny study, off the landing at the top of the stairs, Mabbut drew up the blind and welcomed in the chilly morning light. He settled himself at the computer, interlocked the fingers of both hands, then sipped the remains of his coffee,