The Devils Children

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NICOLA GORE,” said Nicky. “I am Nicola Gore.”

She turned on her right heel, kicking herself around and around with her left foot, until the leather of the heel began to drill a neat, satisfying hole among the roots of the six-inch grass.

“Nicola Gore,” she said as she spun. “Nicola Gore. Nicola Gore. Nicola Gore.”

She was talking to herself, of course, because there was no one else to talk to. The last living person she’d seen had been the one-legged old man who sat on his doorstep in the sun, waiting to die and talking about his boyhood in Hammersmith sixty years ago, when the noise of London traffic had been the rattle and grate of iron wheels on cobbles.

Now the only noise was birdsong, and Nicky say-

ing her own name to herself, aloud in the enormous loneliness.

The old man had gone from his doorstep twelve days ago. She had promised not to try and look for him, because he had said his going would be the sign.

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