"In the bombing. They ran and left it all behind. Yes, eau de nil."

"But who...?"

"Eau de nil is the most charming colour for the bedroom, isn't it?"

"An admirable choice," murmured Nathan's Tati sonorously into Mrs Shapiro's ear, brushing her cheek with the tips of his whiskers.

As we came back down the stairs, he held out his arm for Mrs Shapiro, and she rested her weight on it lightly. She seemed to be blushing more than usual under all the rouge. My plan was working!

The last room we went into was the large drawing room downstairs at the front-the one with the grand piano. The stench in there made us recoil as we stepped inside, and now it was obvious why the room had been out of use for so long. Mr Ali had removed the boards from the window, and in the daylight we could see the sagging ceiling and a great crack in the bay, so wide that you could see daylight on the other side and the green of the monkey puzzle puzzle tree. A trail of muddy paw prints led from the base of the crack across the carpet towards the door with its broken latch. So this explained the mystery of how the Phantom Pooer got in and out-even though I still didn't know which one was the culprit. In fact that was the least of our problems. tree. A trail of muddy paw prints led from the base of the crack across the carpet towards the door with its broken latch. So this explained the mystery of how the Phantom Pooer got in and out-even though I still didn't know which one was the culprit. In fact that was the least of our problems.

Nathan, Nathan's Tati and Mr Ali went over to examine the crack, rubbing their chins solemnly and pacing up and down with lowered eyes, the way men do in B&Q.

"There are new types of heavy-duty fast-setting foam fillers, called structural methacrylates, suitable for construction work..." Nathan began hesitantly.

"But this does not fixitup the problem," Mr Ali scratched his head. "First we must find out what causes. Maybe this tree..."

They were looking into the break in the floorboards below the ruptured skirting board. "We could cut the tree down, dig the roots out, then pump the gap full of methacrylate foam," suggested Nathan.

"Concrete may be better," said Mr Ali. "But pity to cut up such a fine tree."

"Mind the gap," Nathan's Tati murmured to Mrs Shapiro, who had come over to have a look, placing his hand on her shoulder and letting it linger there.

"What do you think, Mrs Shapiro? Should we cut the tree down?" asked Ms Baddiel.

Mrs Shapiro looked shifty. "No. Yes. Maybe."

I remembered her correspondence with the Council's tree department.

"It may have a preservation order on it," I said. "Shall I contact the Council and find out?"

Everyone seemed pleased with this suggestion. As we stood staring into the crack, a skinny feline head poked up between the floorboards and the Stinker eased himself into the drawing room. Crouching low, he looked around the semi-circle of human legs, found a suitable gap, and made a dash for the door.

"Raus! Little p.i.s.ske! Raus!" cried Mrs Shapiro, waving him on, but you could see she didn't mean it. A cheerful almost skittish mood had come over her; she was revelling in the presence of so many visitors-or maybe of one visitor in particular. She moved over to the piano, lifted the cover and tinkled a few notes. Even those out-of-tune keys seemed to come alive under her touch. To my amazement, without any music to read, she started to play the Toreador Song', embellishing it with broken chords and little trills, and Nathan's Tati, standing behind her, gave us a full baritone rendition-he was more in tune than the piano. Nathan joined in the choruses. At the end, Mrs Shapiro sat back, placing her gnarled ring-encrusted hands together with a sigh.

"Hends no good, isn't it?"

"Nonsense, Naomi," said Tati, taking her hands and holding them in his.

Then we all made our way back towards the entrance hall to say our goodbyes. Nabeel had to intervene to halt a hissing and scratching match between Mussorgsky and Wonder Boy-despite his initial aversion to cat poo, he had turned out to be quite a cat lover. Mr Ali talked to his nephew softly in Arabic and embraced him in a hamstery hug. Mrs Shapiro sidled up to me nodding her head towards Nathan, and whispered, "He is your new boyfriend, Georgine?"

"Not my boyfriend. Just a friend."

"Good thing," she whispered. "He is too pet.i.te for you. But quite intelligent. The father also is charming. Pity he is too old for me."

After they'd all gone, Mrs Shapiro and her attendants went back to sit by the fire leaving me alone in the hall for a moment, and that's when I noticed that the framed photograph of Lydda which used to hang above the hall table had disappeared. There was nothing but a nail sticking out of the wall to show it had been there. Who had moved it? I was still puzzling over it when suddenly I heard the distinct clack of the front gate. I thought it must be one of the others coming back for something they'd forgotten so I opened the door. Coming down the path towards the house was Mrs Goodney in her lizard-green quilted jacket and her pointy shoes, with an important-looking black briefcase under her arm. Behind her came a dark thickset man I'd never seen before, middle-aged, wearing a crumpled brown suit. Neither of them was smiling. There was something odd about the way the man was looking at us: his eyes seemed asymmetrical.

Mrs Goodney stopped in her tracks when she saw me standing in the doorway. She eyed me up for a few moments. Then she continued her advance. Now a third person, a tall spindly youth, appeared on the garden path and made his way towards us. It was Damian Lee, the young man from Hendricks & Wilson, his hair sticking up with gel, his suit a bit too short in the legs. Blue socks. He was looking up and around, studying the house, avoiding my eyes.

"Feeding the cats again, are we?" said Mrs Goodney to me. I was so taken aback by her rudeness that I forgot to ask her what she was doing here. She turned to Damian and smiled toothily.

"Glad you could make it, Mr Lee. The gentleman just needs an initial estimate of value at this stage."

The thickset man nodded. He was looking at the house in frank amazement, his misaligned eyes sliding around this way and that. Then I realised one of them was made of gla.s.s.

"Must be vort a bit, eh?" he said. "Big house like this. Good part of London town. I am somewhat impressed." His English was better than Mrs Shapiro's, if a bit pedantic, with just a slight guttural accent.

Damian took a dog-eared notebook out of his pocket and started to make notes with a stub of pencil. He was still avoiding my eyes.

"Unfortunately it's not worth as much as you think. It's in poor condition, as you can see." Mrs Goodney was simpering at the gla.s.s-eye man. "I've had a reputable builder to view it and he reports that it needs a substantial amount of money spending on it to bring it up to present-day standards. I'll show you his report if you like." The gla.s.s-eye man sniffed discontentedly, but Mrs Goodney placed one plump red-nailed gold-ringed hand on his arm and the other on Damian's. "Don't worry, Mr Lee'll quote you a good price. Won't you, Mr Lee?"

Damian nodded and chewed the end of his pencil.

"This is what you do for your five grand, is it, Damian?" I hissed. He ignored me and carried on chewing.

"Seems like she's already had some builders in. Cowboys, by the look of it." Her eye had fallen on the UPVC window on the first floor.

"He's not a cowboy," I blurted out. They all stared at me. "He's..."

Then I noticed that their gaze had shifted away from me to a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. I turned round. Mrs Shapiro was standing there, and behind her, Nabeel and Ishmail.

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs Shapiro," Mrs Goodney's rusty-gate voice squeaked with fake cheeriness. "What are you doing here, sweetie? You're supposed to be..."

"I am come home. Finish mit Nightmare."

"But you can't stay here on your own. This house isn't safe for you, poppet."

"Poppet schmoppet." She pulled herself up into her five-feet-tall, chin-out-fighting pose and looked the social worker in the eye. Her cheeks were still flushed from the excitement of the morning. "I heff my attendents. I will claim the attendents allowance."

The young men standing behind her flashed their teeth and their eyes at everybody. Violetta, who seemed to have snuck in with Mussorgsky, was hovering around our feet rubbing herself against Mrs Shapiro's legs and purring. Unexpectedly, she arched her back and hissed at Mrs Goodney, who almost-you could see it in her face-hissed back.

Suddenly the man with the gla.s.s eye stepped forward and fixed Mrs Shapiro with his disconcerting gaze.

"Ella? You are Ella Wechsler?"

Mrs Shapiro drew back. I couldn't see her face, but I could hear her throaty intake of breath. "You are mistooken. I am Naomi Shapiro."

"You are not Naomi Shapiro." His voice was gravelly. "She was my mother."

"I don't know what you talking about." Mrs Shapiro elbowed past me, reached out, and slammed the door.

They didn't go away for about half an hour. Standing inside the freshly painted hall, the four of us listened to them ringing on the doorbell and rattling the letter box. Then we heard their voices as they walked round the outside of the house and started rapping on the kitchen door. Somewhere in the depths of the house, Wonder Boy started to yowl. Eventually they gave up.

I didn't leave until I was sure the coast was clear. I walked home slowly, trying to make sense of what had happened. He must be the real Naomi Shapiro's son-the child she wrote about in her letters, the gummy brown-eyed baby in the photo-this thickset, ugly middle-aged man who had embodied all the idealism and hopes of his beautiful mother. But who was she? And how had Mrs Goodney contacted him? Maybe this was why I'd found no doc.u.ments or papers in the house-Mrs Goodney had got there first. Had got them and used them to summon up this genie from the past.

As soon as I got home I went up to my bedroom, and spread the photos out on the floor. Baby Artem; the wedding photo; the couple by the fountain; the woman in the archway; the two women at the Highbury house; the Wechsler family; the moshav near Lydda. At half past four, Ben wandered in to see what I was doing, and pointed out something so obvious I should have noticed it before.

"I wonder why he's carrying a gun."

"Who?"

"The man who took the photo. Look."

He pointed to a dark patch on the stony foreground in the landscape photograph. It was the shadow of the photographer-the sun was behind him, and you could see the outline of the head and shoulders, the arms raised to hold the camera to the eye, and something long and straight hanging down from one shoulder. Yes, it could be a gun.

He picked up the photograph of the woman standing in the stone archway and turned it over.

"Who's she?"

"I think she must be Naomi Shapiro."

"The old lady down the road?"

"No, someone else."

"It says Lydda."

"That's a place. In Israel."

"I know, Mum. It's in one of the prophecies. It's supposed to be where the Antichrist returns." His voice had gone husky.

"Don't be daft, Ben," I said. Then I saw the look in his eyes. "Sorry-I didn't mean you're you're daft, I meant daft, I meant it it's daft. All that Antichrist stuff. Putin and the Pope. The Prince of Wales and his evil bar codes." I was trying to sound jokey, but Ben didn't smile.

"The Muslims call him Dajjal? He's got one eye? He gets killed by Jesus in this ma.s.sive battle at the gates of Lydda?" There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

"Ben, it's all..." The word on my lips was 'rubbish', but I held back.

"I know you don't believe in it, Mum. I'm not gonna argue about it, all right? I'm not even sure I believe all of it myself. But I know there's something in it. I just know. Like, I can feel it coming?"

5.

If Only It Came In Tubes

40.

Heavy as watermelons I walked round to Canaan House the next day, hoping to have a chance to speak to Mr Ali. I wanted to ask him about Lydda. After my unsettling talk with Ben last night, I'd logged on to the internet to look up information about the prophecies relating to Lydda. This story-1 wasn't sure where it was leading me, but now, because of Ben, it had become my story, too, and I knew I had to follow it through. walked round to Canaan House the next day, hoping to have a chance to speak to Mr Ali. I wanted to ask him about Lydda. After my unsettling talk with Ben last night, I'd logged on to the internet to look up information about the prophecies relating to Lydda. This story-1 wasn't sure where it was leading me, but now, because of Ben, it had become my story, too, and I knew I had to follow it through.

The sun was shining for once, a hard clear brightness, with even a touch of warmth, and I could smell the trees and shrubs catching their silky breaths as if taken by surprise: this is it at last-a real spring day. Around the margins of the lawn, daffodils were poking their yellow heads up between the cut-back loops of bramble that had already started to regrow. Mr Ali was there, standing up on a ladder painting the outside of Mrs Shapiro's bedroom window, singing wordlessly to himself. Wonder Boy was supervising him, sitting on one of the white UPVC chairs in the garden with his tail wrapped round his legs.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr Ali!" I called. "Is everything okay?"

He came back down the ladder wiping his hands on a piece of cloth from the pocket of his blue nylon overall.

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs George. Nice day!"

Actually, I realised that Wonder Boy wasn't supervising Mr Ali at all; he was supervising a couple of thrushes which were hard at work building their nest among a thicket of ivy in one of the ash trees. I watched them come and go with their bits of moss and dry gra.s.s. Wonder Boy was watching too, flicking the tip of his tail.

"Tomorrow I borrow the van, we take Mrs Shapiro to choose a colour of paint for inside."

"That's good."

"How is your son?"

"He's OK, But..." I hesitated. An image of Ben slipped into my mind, his waxy face, the fear in his eyes. He'd gone off to bed last night without eating anything. I'd knocked on the door of his room, but it was locked from the inside. I was beginning to doubt whether this was normal teenage behaviour, something he would grow out of.

"Mr Ali, that picture in the hall-of Lydda. Was it you who took it down?"

"Lydda." He stuck his paintbrush in a pot of turpentine and swirled it around. "In the old times this town was famous for its beautiful mosques. But do you know, Mrs George, that this town is a special place to you also? Is home town of your Christian Saint George. You are named from him, I think?"

I didn't want to admit that in fact I'd been named after George Lansbury. It was Dad's idea, and Mum hadn't been able to think of a suitably inspirational female socialist icon to suggest instead.

"Really? Saint George the dragon slayer came from Lydda?"

"You can see his picture carved above the door of the church."

Sweet Saint Georgina. I recalled Mark Diabello's poem with a shudder. But Ben had also talked about a one-eyed devil.

"The picture of Lydda that was in the hallway, why did you take it down, Mr Ali?"

"Why you are always asking questions, Mrs George?" He wasn't exactly being rude, but the easy friendliness of our previous conversation had gone. "Everything is okay. Sun is shining. I am working. Everybody is happy. Now you start asking questions, and if I tell you the truth you will not be happy."

"You were going to tell me about your family, remember? What happened in Lydda?"

He didn't say anything. He was concentrating on cleaning his brushes. Then he pulled up one of the white plastic chairs and sat down at the table. Wonder Boy had slunk off; I saw him sitting directly beneath the thrushes' tree, staring up into the branches. I shooed him away and sat myself down opposite Mr Ali. He put aside the brushes, poured some of the turpentine on to his hands, rubbed them together and wiped them on a piece of cloth.

"You want to know? Okay. I will tell you, Mrs George." He put the cloth back in his pocket and folded his arms across his XXL tummy. "I come from Lydda. I had one brother, born the same time."

"A twin?"

"If you will please stop interruption, I will tell you."

Mustafa al-Ali, the man I knew as Mr Ali, was bom in Lydda in 1948-this much he knew. He didn't know his mother's name, nor that of his twin brother, nor even his exact date of birth, but he reckons he was a few months old on nth July 1948.

"Why, what happened then?"