The Witch of Portobello Page 0,93

beast of obscurantism is dying, there's bound to be conflict. Andrea may hate me as a person, and that may be why she's developed her gifts so quickly to prove that she was more able than me. When hatred makes a person grow, it's transformed into one of the many ways of loving.'

She picked up her tape-recorder, put it in her bag and left.

At the end of that week, the court gave its verdict: various witnesses were heard, and Sherine Khalil, known as Athena, was given the right to keep custody of her child.

Moreover, the head teacher at the boy's school was officially warned that any kind of discrimination against the boy would be punishable by law.

I knew there was no point in ringing the apartment where she used to live. She'd left the key with Andrea, taken her sound system, some clothes, and said that she would be gone for some time.

I waited for the telephone call to invite me to celebrate that victory together. With each day that passed, my love for Athena ceased being a source of suffering and became a lake of joy and serenity. I no longer felt so alone. At some point in space, our souls and the souls of all those returning exiles were joyfully celebrating their reunion.

The first week passed, and I assumed she was trying to recover from the recent tensions. A month later, I assumed she must have gone back to Dubai and taken up her old job; I telephoned and was told that they'd heard nothing more from her, but if I knew where she was, could I please give her a message: the door was always open, and she was greatly missed.

I decided to write a series of articles on the reawakening of the Mother, which provoked a number of offensive letters accusing me of 'promoting paganism', but which were otherwise a great success with our readership.

Two months later, when I was just about to have lunch, a colleague at work phoned me. The body of Sherine Khalil, the Witch of Portobello, had been found in Hampstead. She had been brutally murdered.

Now that I've finished transcribing all the taped interviews, I'm going to give her the transcript. She's probably gone for a walk in the Snowdonia National Park as she does every afternoon. It's her birthday or, rather, the date that her parents chose for her birthday when they adopted her and this is my present to her.

Viorel, who will be coming to the celebration with his grandparents, has also prepared a surprise for her. He's recorded his first composition in a friend's studio and he's going to play it during supper.

She'll ask me afterwards: 'Why did you do this?'

And I'll say: 'Because I needed to understand you.' During all the years we've been together, I've only heard what I thought were legends about her, but now I know that the legends are true.

Whenever I suggested going with her, be it to the Monday evening celebrations at her apartment, to Romania, or to get-togethers with friends, she always asked me not to. She wanted to be free, and people, she said, find policemen intimidating. Faced by someone like me, even the innocent feel guilty.

However, I went to the Portobello warehouse twice without her knowledge. Again without her knowledge, I arranged for various colleagues to be around to protect her when she arrived and left, and at least one person, later identified as a militant member of some sect, was arrested for carrying a knife. He said he'd been told by spirits to acquire a little blood from the Witch of Portobello, who was a manifestation of the Great Mother. The blood, he said, was needed to consecrate certain offerings. He didn't intend to kill her; he merely wanted a little blood on a handkerchief. The investigation showed that there really was no intention to murder, but nevertheless, he was charged and sentenced to six months in prison.

It wasn't my idea to make it look as if she'd been murdered. Athena wanted to disappear and asked me if that would be possible. I explained that, if the courts decided that the State should have custody of her child, I couldn't go against the law, but when the judge found in her favour, we were free to carry out her plan.

Athena was fully aware that once the meetings at the warehouse became the focus of local gossip, her mission would be ruined for good. There was no point standing up