‘Deirdre? Where are you? Come on! I’m waiting! I’ve got more things to show you! Lots more things!’

It was the shrill voice of the terrifying little girl, Deirdre’s ghost grandmother, calling out from somewhere along the hall ahead of them.

Deirdre looked anguished. She made a movement as if to obey the call. But Gal grabbed her.

Deirdre flinched and withdrew her hand, and he saw for the first time the four livid scratches the ghost child had left.

‘Did she do that to you?’

Deirdre covered the scratches with her other hand.

‘She’s just a little girl, Gal,’ she pleaded. ‘She’s terrified. She’s all alone. She needs me.’

‘But you can’t help her, Deedee,’ said Gal. His mind was racing. He wondered desperately what he could say to persuade her, to make her understand. ‘She’s not just a little girl. She’s an old woman as well. And a young one, and a middle-aged one. She’s everything she ever was in her whole life, all at once, and she’s living it over and over again. She’s locked in a prison of her own making. All your life, she’s been trying to drag you into it with her. But what would that accomplish? She wouldn’t be any happier. There would just be two people in prison instead of one. She can’t save herself by destroying you.

‘Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s distracting us. Deliberately. From our quest. She’s leading us away from it. I thought we had to face whatever she wanted to show us – I thought we had to go through her obstacle course to get to where we’re trying to go. But I don’t think that any more. I think it’s just a trap.

‘Deedee, you’ve heard her story. You’ve spent your life listening to it! You’ve spent your life trying to heal her. You tried so hard . . . But you can’t. You can’t heal her. I don’t think she can be healed . . . She has an incurable wound. But surely, surely, you weren’t born only for this – only to fail at curing something incurable?’

‘Deirdre!’ called the ghost child. ‘Deirdre!’

Her voice was at once so angry and imperious, so plaintive and so reproachful, it chilled both of them to the bone. Deirdre seemed to be in physical pain. But Gal ignored the voice and went on urgently, ‘We have to find it. This is our last chance. Remember what you said, about why she kept building? She’s running from it – she spent years running from it. But whatever she’s running from is our treasure. We have to let her go. We have to let her run away from it, if she can’t face it. But we have to go in the opposite direction. She won’t follow us. She’s too scared.’

‘Deirdre!’ shrieked the ghost child.

Deirdre shut her eyes and put her hands to her ears.

‘Why don’t you trust me?’ said Galahad at last, in desperation. ‘Why did you always trust her more than me?’

And Deirdre looked at him through eyes so dark, so haunted, it was as if he was looking into two black holes.

‘Because she’s only Death, Gal,’ she said softly. ‘You’re Life. And Life is scarier than Death. Believe me.’

Gal opened his mouth to say something. Then stopped, and began again, ‘What –’

For the building had begun to shake gently beneath their feet.

Then there was a splintering noise and the plaster from the ceiling above them started falling like a light snow.

They were standing quite close to one another, facing each other but staring up at the ceiling. Deirdre should have been thinking, it’s about to go, it could go at any minute, I can see it going, it’s all too late, I’ve understood too late. Now we’ll never find it.

But all she could give her mind to was Gal’s warmth, the waves of warmth that seemed to emanate from him, had always emanated from him, as if he were an open fire in a snowy wood. It made her feel drowsy – faint with longing and a sadness she didn’t even understand. Suddenly her grandmother was forgotten. Not even the collapse of the building mattered. Now all that mattered was him.

‘You still don’t remember, do you?’ he said gently, as if there were no danger, as if he wasn’t thinking about the building either, although the floor continued to rock like a large boat in a gentle swell and the plaster kept falling, so that they were both getting whiter and whiter in the shower of it, like ghosts of themselves. ‘You don’t remember about the day she found us in the cave, the day I left you with your grandmother? You don’t even remember anything after the day they tried to burn you. Not about us. Only about her. You don’t remember me being any older than thirteen, do you?’

But she didn’t know what he was talking about. All she knew was that she loved him.

Suddenly, glancing downwards, she noticed a dark stain on his T-shirt, beneath the jacket. It was like an ink blot or a pressed flower. She did not understand it. It passed through her head that he was wearing a shirt with an abstract design on the front, although she had not noticed it before. But at the same time it frightened her.

Almost without meaning to, she reached out and touched it lightly with her fingers. It was damp, and very warm.

Then she felt a stab of guilt, as if she had transgressed in some way, as if she had touched something forbidden.

But he took the hand she had touched him with and bent his head and kissed it with such passion that it was as if her whole self were in her hand and his whole self was expressed in the act of kissing.

She stared at him, startled. But she didn’t move away.

‘You’re wounded,’ she said.

He didn’t stop kissing her.

‘But it must hurt!’ she said, as if the kissing had been an answer and she was protesting.

‘All the time,’ he murmured.

‘We’re not allowed,’ she said hopelessly, although already she could barely speak with the joy and the relief and the strange familiarity of the kissing. ‘She’ll kill you,’ she murmured. ‘She’ll kill us both . . .’

He didn’t stop kissing her. He never stopped kissing her.

And there was no jealous old woman, or terrifying child, to come and separate them, and it didn’t matter about the building collapsing – what mattered was that this should happen first, even if they perished in the attempt. And for Deirdre there were no more words, no more fear, no more darkness, no more cold – only kisses, only warmth, only light, only him.