He was sitting in the lounge of the Sunny View nursing home that afternoon, chocked upright in his wheelchair with the aid of cushions, drooling and staring at me with blank eyes. The room reeked of vomit with an astringent overlay of bleach.

"Who're you, then?"

I sighed. I was accustomed to the mind-numbing, repet.i.tive charade. "Ben," I said. "Benjamin. Your son."

Sometimes it worked, and I would see the dull light of recognition in his rheumy eyes. Today, however, he remained blank.

"Who're you, then? What do you want?"

"I'm Ben, your son. I've come to visit you."

I looked around the room, at the other patients, or "guests" as the nurses called them; they all gazed into s.p.a.ce, seeing not the future, but the past.

"Who're you, then?"

Where was the strong man I had hated for so long? Such was his decrepitude that I could not bring myself to hate him any longer; I only wished that he would die.

I had wished him dead so many times in the past. Now it came to me that he was having his revenge, that he was protracting his life purely to spite me.

In Holland, I thought, where a euthanasia law had been pa.s.sed years ago, the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be long dead.

I stood and moved to the window. The late afternoon view was far from sunny. Snow covered the hills to the far horizon, above which the sky was mauve with the promise of evening.

I was overcome with a sudden and soul-destroying depression.

"What's this?" my father said.

I focused on his apparition reflected in the plate-gla.s.s window. His thin hand had strayed to his implant.

"What's this, then?"

I returned to him and sat down. I would go through this one more time-for perhaps the hundredth time in a year-and then say goodbye and leave.

His frail fingers tapped the implant at his temple, creating a hollow drumming sound.

"It's your implant," I said.

"What's it doing there?"

It sat beneath the papery skin of his temple, raised and rectangular, the approximate size of a matchbox.

"The medics put it there. Most people have them now. When you die, it will bring you back to life."

His eyes stared at me, then through me, uncomprehendingly.

I stood. "I'm going now. I'll pop in next week..." It would be more like next month, but, in his shattered mind, all days were one now.

As I strode quickly from the room I heard him say, "Who're you, then?"

An infant-faced Filipino nurse beamed at me as I pa.s.sed reception. "Would you like a cup of tea, Mr. Knightly?"

I usually refused, wanting only to be out of the place, but that day something made me accept the offer.

Serendipity. Had I left Sunny View then, I might never have met Elisabeth. The thought often fills me with panic.

"Coffee, if that's okay? I'll be in here." I indicated a room designated as the library, though stocked only with Mills and Boon paperbacks, Reader's Digest Reader's Digest magazines and large-print Western novels. magazines and large-print Western novels.

I scanned the chipboard bookcases for a real book, then gave up. I sat down in a big, comfortable armchair and stared out at the snow. A minute later the coffee arrived. The nurse intuited that I wished to be left alone.

I drank the coffee and gazed at my reflection in the gla.s.s. I felt like a patient, or rather a "guest".

I think I was weeping when I heard, "It is depressing, isn't it?"

The voice shocked me. She was standing behind my chair, gripping a steaming mug and smiling.

I dashed away a tear, overcome with irritation at the interruption.

She sat down in the chair next to mine. I guessed she was about my age-around thirty- though I learned later that she was thirty-five. She was broad and short with dark hair bobbed, like brackets, around a pleasant, homely face.

"I know what it's like. My mother's a guest here. She's senile." She had a direct way of speaking that I found refreshing.

"My father has Alzheimer's," I said. "He's been in here for the past year."

She rolled her eyes. "G.o.d! The repet.i.tion! I sometimes just want to strangle her. I suppose I shouldn't be saying that, should I? The thing is, we were so close. I love her dearly."

I found myself saying, "In time, when she dies and returns, her memory will-" I stopped, alarmed by something in her expression.

It was as if I had slapped her.

Her smile persisted, but it was a brave one now in the face of adversity. She shook her head. "She isn't implanted. She refused."

"Is she religious?"

"No," she said, "just stubborn. And fearful. She doesn't trust the Kethani."

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head, as if to dismiss the matter. "I'm Elisabeth, by the way. Elisabeth Carstairs."

She reached out a hand, and, a little surprised at the forthright gesture, I took it. I never even thought to tell her my own name.

She kept hold of my hand, turning it over like an expert palm reader. Only later did I come to realise that she was as lonely as I was: the difference being, of course, that Elisabeth had hope, something I had given up long ago.

"Don't tell me," she said, examining my weather-raw fingers. "You're a farmer, right?"

I smiled. "Wrong. I build and repair dry-stone walls."

She laughed. "Well, I was almost there, wasn't I? You do work outdoors, with your hands."

"What do you do?" I would never have asked normally, but something in her manner put me at ease. She did not threaten.

"I teach English. The comprehensive over at Bradley."

"Then you must know Jeff Morrow. He's a friend."

"You know Jeff? What a small world."

"We meet in the Fleece every Tuesday." I shrugged. "Creatures of habit."

She glanced at her watch and pulled a face. "I really should be getting off. It's been nice talking..." She paused, looking quizzical.

I was slow on the uptake, then realised. "Ben," I said. "Ben Knightly. Look, I'm driving into the village. I can give you a lift if you-"

She jangled car keys. "Thanks anyway."

I stood to leave, nodding awkwardly, and for the first time she could see the left-hand side of my face.

She stared, something stricken in her eyes, at where my implant should have been.

I hurried from the nursing home and into the raw winter wind, climbed into my battered ten-year-old Sherpa van and drove away at speed.

The following evening, just as I was about to set off to the Fleece, the phone rang. I almost ignored it, but it might have been a prospective customer, and I was going through a lean spell.

"h.e.l.lo, Ben Knightly? Elisabeth here, Elisabeth Carstairs. We met yesterday."

"Of course, yes." My heart was thudding, my mouth dry, the usual reactions of an inexperienced teenager to being phoned by a girl.

"The thing is, I have a wall that needs fixing. A couple of cows barged through it the other day. I don't suppose...?"

"Always looking for work," I said, experiencing a curious mixture of relief and disappointment. "I could come round tomorrow, or whenever's convenient."

"Sometime tomorrow afternoon?" She gave me her address.

"I'll be there between two and three," I said, thanked her and rang off.

That night, in the main bar of the Fleece, I was on my third pint of Landlord before I broached the subject of Elisabeth Carstairs.

Jeff Morrow was a small, thoughtful man who shared my interest in football and books. An accretion of sadness showed in his eyes. He had lost two people close to him, over the years; one had been his wife, killed in a car accident before the coming of the Kethani; the other a lover who had refused to be implanted.

He had never once commented on the fact that I was not implanted, and I respected him for this.

The other members of our party were Richard Lincoln and Khalid and Zara Azzam.

"I met a woman called Elisabeth Carstairs yesterday," I said. "She teaches at your school, Jeff."

"Ah, Liz. Lovely woman. Good teacher. The kids love her. One of those naturals."

That might have been the end of that conversation, but I went on, "Is she married?"

He looked up. "Liz? G.o.d no."

Richard traced the outline of his implant with an absent forefinger. "Why 'G.o.d, no', Jeff? She isn't-?"

"No, nothing like that." He shrugged, uncomfortable. Jeff is a tactful man. He said to me, "She's been looking after her mother for the past ten years. As long as I've known her, she's never had a boyfriend."

Khalid winked at me. "You're in there, Ben." Zara dug her husband in the ribs with a sharp elbow.

I swore at him. Jeff said, "Where did you meet?"

I told him, and conversation moved on to the health of my father (on his third stroke, demented, but still hanging on), and then by some process of convoluted logic to Leeds United's prospects this Sat.u.r.day.

Another thing I liked about the Tuesday night group was that they never made digs about the fact that I'd never had a girlfriend since they'd known me-since my early twenties, if the truth be known.

I'd long ago reconciled myself to a life mending dry-stone walls, reading the cla.s.sics, and sharing numerous pints with friends at the Fleece.

And I'd never told anyone that I blamed my father. Some wounds are too repulsive to reveal.

It was midnight by the time I made my way up the hill and across the moors to the cottage. I recall stopping once to gaze at the Onward Station, towering beside the reservoir a mile away. It coruscated in the light of the full moon like a stalagmite of ice.

As I stared, a beam of energy, blindingly white, arced through the night sky towards the orbiting Kethani starship, and the sight, I must admit, frightened me.

"I tried repairing it myself," Elisabeth said, "but as you can see I went a bit wrong."

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle," I said. "It's just a matter of finding the right piece and fitting it in."

It was one of those rare, brilliantly sunny November days. There was no wind, and the snow reflected the sunlight with a twenty-four carat dazzle.

I dropped the last stone into place, rocked it home, and then stood back and admired the repair.

"Thirty minutes," Elisabeth said. "You make it look so easy."

I smiled. "Matter of fact, I built this wall originally, twelve years ago."

"You've been in the business that long?"

We chatted. Elisabeth wore snow boots and a padded parka with a fur-lined hood that that made her look like an Eskimo. She stamped her feet. "Look, it's bitter out here. Would you like a coffee?"

"Love one."

Her house was a converted barn on the edge of the moor, on the opposite side of the village to my father's cottage where I lived. Inside it was luxurious: deep pile carpets, a lot of low beams and bra.s.s. The s.p.a.cious kitchen was heated by an Aga.