Irene Caxwell had tried for ages to get a rental for the little annexe attached to the rear of her bungalow. The place was small, admittedly, and perhaps not ideally located for tenants who wanted easy access to the nearby town of Windsor. The lodgings were cold, too, but she’d had a wood burner installed and a big stack of logs sat ready for the fire. This winter the occupants would be toasty. Not that the summer was over yet, of course. September had so far been unseasonably warm, and the woods round her house still teemed with life. Swallows flitted back and forth, fattening themselves with the last of the season’s bounties before their long flight south. She could see rabbits hopping at the edge of the field, and the squirrels were causing havoc when she put food out for the birds.
The two men turned up late one evening. At first she felt a little unsettled. They were… not white.
Her unease soon vanished. Sabin and Mohid were both so friendly, so erudite and Sabin was, well, so beautiful. His face was angelic, with piercing eyes and flawless skin, a wisp of beard on his chin. They were students, Sabin explained, and had recently returned from a study trip abroad. Now they needed solitude to complete their PhDs in time for the end-of-year deadline. What were they studying, she enquired. Mohid’s PhD was to do with astro-something-or-other. Astrology? No, that didn’t sound quite right. Never mind. She remembered Sabin had said he was examining the Islamic diaspora. She didn’t know what diaspora meant, but Islam…
‘What do you mean, not white?’ her friend Sybil said when she told her about her new tenants.
‘They’re a couple of those…’ Irene said. ‘You know. Muslims.’
Sybil brushed aside Irene’s concerns. ‘I slept with one once. It was in Turkey. You remember the holiday I took a few years back? Well, it was then. A young Kurdish man. Very nice. Very… um… very… good.’
Irene’s mouth dropped open. ‘That was the holiday you took for your sixtieth!’
Sybil nodded, smiling. Something about her face. A warm glow. As if vitality could spring forth from a memory. ‘Yes.’
Irene showed Sabin and Mohid the annexe and explained it was completely separate from the main house. They’d be able to come and go as they wished. They both seemed pleased and asked if they could move in right away. And they’d pay cash, if that was OK?
OK? It was fine!
‘One thing,’ she said when they were back outside but before she accepted the money. ‘You wanted peace and quiet and solitude, but you do know what’s just over there?’
She pointed over the roof of the bungalow and as if by magic a huge shape loomed in the air, engines on full power, the fuselage seemingly close enough to reach up and touch. As several hundred tonnes of aluminium and passengers and aviation fuel crawled into the sky above them, the windows rattled and the ground beneath their feet shook.
‘Heathrow airport.’ Irene cocked her head. ‘Are you sure the planes won’t worry you?’
‘No,’ Sabin said. He glanced at Mohid and smiled as he looked up. ‘They won’t worry us one little bit.’