"Baint, yes," he nodded enthusiastically, and said something in Arabic. The useless ones nodded enthusiastically too.

"I'll give you a ring. I need to get a spare set of keys cut," I said, playing for time, thinking maybe Mrs Shapiro would be back soon.

But on Wednesday morning there was a letter for me on the door mat. I recognised my own handwriting on the envelope. The letter inside was written with thick blue marker-pen-the sort Mum used for marking her Bingo cards.

Dearest Georgine, Dearest Georgine, Thank you for your Card and for you sending my Nicky to comfort me in Prison. He is quite adorable! He was coming with Champagne and white Roses. A real Gentleman! We were talking for Hours about Poetry Music Philosophy the Time was pa.s.sing too quick like flowing Water under a Bridge and I am always asking myself what matters it if there gives a Gulf in our Ages so long as there gives a Harmony inbetween our Souls. It was like so with Artem he was twenty years my older but we have found Joy together. I wonder if I would ever find such a Joy again with another Man to feel the arms of a Mans around me and the warmth of a good Body close beside mine better than Cats. He has said he will come again now every Hour is dragging too long I wait for him to come and you also my dear Georgine. How have I escaped Transportation and Inprisonment in all my life only to face it now alone in my Older Age. They are wanting me to sign a Confession before I can return to my Home. They are saying I must give the Power of Returning but my Nicky also is saying I must not sign nothing so I am putting a brave resistance. I must stop the Nurse comes soon with my Injection. Please help me.

Your dear Friend, Naomi Shapiro Naomi Shapiro I read it through a couple of times. Then I tried to read between the lines. Then I phoned Mr Wolfe.

"Thanks for taking my card round. How was she? She looked awful in hospital. I was surprised they let her out so quickly."

"Bit of bruising. Gash to the head. Nothing too serious. We had a good laugh."

"She seems to be very fond of you." I was wheedling for information.

"Yes. And you know, in a funny way, I've grown quite fond of her, too."

There was a glibness in his voice, as though it was something he'd been practising.

"Do you know anything about this confession she's been asked to sign?"

"Sorry?"

"Something about power of returning."

"Ah. Yes. They're wanting her to sign a Power of Attorney."

"What does that mean?" It sounded ominous.

"It means they-whoever she signed it over to-would have the power to sign legal doc.u.ments on her behalf..."

"Like the sale of a house, for instance?"

"Got it in one."

I felt my heart starting to race. Things seemed to be spiralling out of control again, but I kept my voice steady.

"What can we do to stop that?"

"I've been wondering that myself."

Whatever he had in mind, he obviously wasn't going to share it. I needed to find out what he knew, without giving away too much myself. Then I thought of something that would put him on the back foot.

"Did she tell you about her son? Apparently he's coming over from Israel. That'll be a great help, won't it?"

I thought I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone.

"Indeed."

There was something else I needed to know.

"By the way, did you have any trouble getting in? They seem to have quite strict security."

"Oh, yes, they told me she wasn't allowed any visitors."

"So...?"

"I just told them not to be so b.l.o.o.d.y ridiculous."

So that's how it's done, I thought.

An hour or so later the phone was rang. It was Mark Diabello.

"Hi, Georgina. Glad I've caught you at home. Listen, I think I've got the answer to your dilemma."

"What dilemma?" I tried to remember our last conversation. It was something unpleasant and incomprehensible about bricks and money.

"How to avoid Mrs Shapiro having to sell up if she goes into a home. Apparently the Council can just put a charge on her house. It's like a mortgage-the house is sold after the person dies, and that's when the Council calls in the debt. The residue if any goes to the estate."

"You mean the debt to cover the nursing home fees? n.o.body told me about that."

"Well, they wouldn't, would they?"

"But the thing is, Mark, she doesn't need to be in a nursing home at all. She's fine at home. She likes her independence."

"You'd better get her back home as soon as you can, then. Or get someone else to live in the house till she gets back. These things've got a way of picking up their own momentum."

"Tell me about it."

The whole house saga had picked up far too much momentum, as far as I was concerned, and he'd been among those pushing it along.

"How about over dinner tonight, sweetheart?"

There was an earnest note in his voice that made me feel guilty; but I steeled myself.

"I can't. I'm meeting...somebody. And I've got a lot of work on at the moment-something I'm trying to write," I added quickly.

"You're a very active woman. I like that." A sigh or a crackle on the line. "As it happens, I do a bit of writing myself. Poetry."

"Really?" Despite myself, I was intrigued. The hero of the original Splattered Heart Splattered Heart had been a poet, too. "Will you show me?" had been a poet, too. "Will you show me?"

"I'd love to. When...?"

"I'll ring you." I put the phone down.

I'd arranged to meet Mr Ali and the Uselesses in the afternoon, and I still hadn't got a set of keys cut, so I walked down to the cobblers on the b.a.l.l.s Pond Road then back up to Totley Place. It had turned cold again, a spiteful, stabbing cold, with a mean wind shaking the naked branches of the trees against a washed-out sky and flinging swirls of litter and dead leaves against my legs. At least the rain had held off.

It was just after two when I arrived at Canaan House. The red van was already parked outside, and the three of them were hunched up in the front, the Uselesses puffing at cigarettes, Mr Ali reading a newspaper. The house looked startlingly different, the white plastic window with its breeze-block base seemed to wink at me like a diseased eye. As soon as they saw me they jumped down, talking excitedly in Arabic, and followed me up the path, carrying their stuff with them in dozens of carrier bags. They looked as though they were planning to move in for a while. There were sleeping bags, books, clothes, a CD player, and even an old PC. In one carrier bag I spotted what looked like the Arabic outfits-obviously they hadn't given up on them yet. I showed them upstairs.

While they were unpacking and sorting their stuff out, I walked around the house with Mr Ali, pointing out the things I thought needed fixing: the missing slates on the porch, the broken latch on the door to the front room and the faulty light, the peeling wallpaper in the dining room, the dripping taps in the bathroom and kitchen, the cracked toilet bowl, and the huge gaps around the edges of doors and window frames where the wind whistled in. Those were just the obvious things.

"Hm. Hm," he said, writing it all down in a notebook. "All will be fixitup good, Mrs George."

He'd never seen inside the whole house before. As his bright hamster eyes explored the details of the rooms he made little murmurs of amazement. "Hm. Hm." When we went up into the attic, he gasped. "In here we could make beautiful benthouse suite."

"Let's just concentrate on the essentials to start with," I said.

Down in the hall, he stopped once more in front of the picture of the church at Lydda, his arms folded in front of him. I tried to read the emotion in his face, but he was turned in profile, so all I could see was the shadow of a furrow in his brow.

"You know, exactly next door to this church was a mosque. Cross and crescent standing side by side in peace."

"Tell me about Lydda," I said. "Is your family still there?"

"Do you not know about Nakba?"

"Nakba? What's that?"

"Hm. You are completely ignorant." He said it with a sigh, in the same way that he'd introduced the Uselesses. "In my country we say that ignorance is the warm bath in which it is comfortable to sit but dangerous to lie down."

"I'm sorry. I'll make some tea if you tell me."

I put the kettle on, rinsed two of the less grotty cups as thoroughly as I could under the tap, and put a krautertee tea bag into each of them. We sat on the wooden chairs at the kitchen table. Fortunately I'd cleared away the remnants of Mrs Shapiro's last unfinished meal. He drank his pond water with three heaped spoonfuls of sugar, so I put the same into mine-obviously this was the secret. We stirred and sipped.

"So you were going to tell me about your family," I prompted.

"I will tell you how they left Lydda. But you know the history-about British Palestine Mandate?"

"Well, just a bit. Actually, not a lot."

He sighed again.

"But you know about Jewish Holocaust?"

"Yes, I know about that."

"Of course, everybody knows about sufferings of the Jews." He sniffed irritably. "Only suffering of Palestinian people n.o.body knows."

"But I want to know, Mr Ali. If you'll tell me."

This story-I could see by now that it was going to be much more complicated than a Ms Firestorm-type romance. But it had somehow got under my skin.

Mr Ali blew on his tea and took a sip, sucking the sweet liquid off the ends of his moustache.

"You know in the end of the war, after what they have done to the Jews, the whole world was looking for a Jewish homeland? And the cunning British say-look, we will give them this land in Palestine. Land without people, people without land. Typical British, they give away something which does not belong to them." He looked up to make sure I was still paying attention. I nodded encouragingly. "This land is not empty, Mrs George. Palestinian people have been living there, farming our land, for generations. Now they say we must give half of it up to the Jews. Did you not learn about it in school?"

"No." I was embarra.s.sed by my ignorance. Geography, okay I had an excuse. But I'd done history at 'O' level. "In history lessons we learned about Kings and Queens of England. Henry the Eighth and his six wives."

"Six wives? All at one time?"

"No. He killed two and he divorced two, and one died."

"Typical British behaviour. Same with us. Some killed. Some sent away into exile. Some died." Mr Ali shook his head crossly and took a gulp of tea, scalding his mouth and sucking in air to cool himself down.

"But that was a long time ago."

"No. Nineteen forty-eight. Same like the Romans did to Jews, Jews did to Palestinians. Chased them out. We call it Nakba. It means disaster in your language."

"No, I mean Henry the Eighth was a long time ago."

"Before Romans?"

"No, after the Romans, but before...Never mind." I saw the bemused look on his face.

"It's all just history, isn't it?"

This seemed to make him even more annoyed.

"You have learned nothing in school. Apart from a man with six wives. History has no borders, Mrs George. Past rolls up into present rolls up into future." He made agitated roly-poly movements with his hands. "Young Israelis also are ignorant. In school, their teachers tell them Jews came into an empty land, but not how this land was made empty."

I thought about the letter in the piano stool. Yes, that's what she she wrote-a barren and empty land. wrote-a barren and empty land.

"So was it like...the n.a.z.is and the Jews?"

"No, not like n.a.z.is," he tutted angrily. "You must not exaggerate. Israelis do not plan to exterminate all Arab people, only to drive them out of the land."

"But the Jewish people need a homeland, too. Don't they?"

He sighed. His mouth curled down.

"But why in Palestine? Palestinian people never made any harm to Jews. Pogrom, ghetto, concentration camp-Europeans made all this. So why they make their revenge on us?"

"It was was their land, wasn't it? Before the Romans sent them away?" their land, wasn't it? Before the Romans sent them away?"

"This land belongs to many peoples. All nomadic peoples wandering here and there, following their sheeps. Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia. Who knows where everybody was coming from?"

My mind blanked out. All those places-how on earth did they fit together? I would have to look it up on the internet.

"They will tell you Palestinians abandoned their farms and houses and ran away because their leaders told them. No, they ran away because of terror. Israeli state was made by terrorists. You think only crazy Arabs are terrorists?" Mr Ali was becoming intensely un-hamster-like.

"I'm sorry to be so ignorant. At school we just learned British history."

"So you must know about Balfour declaration?"