of the sea, rumbling below. The engine whined as they went higher, up the hairpin turns.
He stopped at a pullout at the top of the rise. They alighted from the car, and she rested her head against his chest, looking out at the dark seascape.
“I used to ride my bike up here when I was a boy,” he said. “It made me feel as if I were standing on top of the world, the sea and the cliffs stretching on forever. It’s as if you can see everything from here.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s magical. You know, it’s funny, on the way up, I even thought I saw shapes in the waves.”
“Such as?”
“Women and horses. Isn’t that odd?”
He laughed. “My grandfather used to tell stories about how Cuculain drove his horses into the sea during battle; he said that sometimes you can see them cantering in the waves, the mermaids riding toward the cliffs, singing to lure men into the water.”
“Has anyone claimed to have been enchanted?” She smiled.
“My friends and I went surfing there once and got pulled out in a riptide. We didn’t think anything could harm us. We might have drowned if Colleen and Finn hadn’t been out on their boat and come after us.”
“And the horses? Did you see them?”
“No. One of my friends insisted he did, though we put it down to too much ale,” he said. “But there’s no getting around the fact that the waves made eerie sounds that day.”
“Have you been surfing there since?”
“No.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, “though I wonder, does that mean you believe the stories?”
“I enjoy the telling—and it’s true that women can cast a spell on men.”
“Oh, really?”
“One woman in particular.” He guided her to the foot of a crumbled tower, little left but lichened stones, and yet it was enough to shelter them, wrapped in a felted wool blanket for warmth, as they moved in that palm of history, then lay still, breathing together, dreaming apart.
The dream again: Ekaterina waving good-bye from the tube entrance before vanishing into the underground, off to her job at the graphic arts firm. Sullivan had told her she didn’t have to work anymore, that he could support them both, leaving her more time to paint. She wouldn’t listen. She liked making her own way, as she’d done ever since she left home at the age of fifteen. She hadn’t been back to Czechoslovakia since, wouldn’t say why. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all in the past.
She wore a pale blue chiffon top, a pair of jeans, flats, because they were comfortable and she didn’t need the height. She was thin and pale, otherworldly. That’s what he thought the first time he saw her on the streets of Prague, two years ago. They’d been a couple ever since. They usually rode the train together, but he’d forgotten his mobile—she shook her head and laughed; he was always forgetting something. What would he do without her? He dashed back to the house to get it. He could make the trip in five minutes flat, but would probably have to catch the next train. Five minutes flat. To the second. He knew by the hands of his watch. Such a small fraction of time, but enough for everything to change, for the streets to be in chaos, sirens wailing, people shouting, panicked. Some bleeding, others sooty, wandering, stunned.
He didn’t understand at first, overheard cries, whispers, terrorists, bombs, tried to push through, but the police were already there and blocked the entrance, black smoke coming up behind them as if from the depths of hell.
“She’s in there! I have to find her!”
They didn’t move. They had their orders.
His emotions detached, like cars from a train. He played the scene back in his head, a slow rewinding of the day’s events that had led them to that point, that place. First, breakfast in the nook overlooking the garden. The crunch of toast, the rustling of the newspaper. Neither of them talking much; they weren’t morning people. She touched her foot to his, bare, warm. The glance at the clock, the realization that it was time to go, that they’d be late. The rush down the hall and out the door, running together, laughing. And then the forgotten phone.
He didn’t know that in retrieving it, he’d lose her.
One bomb in one train: theirs. It wasn’t supposed to happen again—not after the tube bombings a few years before. And yet it did.
He should have been with her.