Nobody who has spent so much time in the public eye can simply vanish and not expect their disappearance to be noted and commented on.

London

Adèle is talking to the editor of the Chronicle in the saloon bar of the Vine public house in Fleet Street.

'So she's just upped sticks and gone?'

'Looks like it, boss.'

'I don't understand what's going on here.  You say she hated her sister, this Professor Belacqua, and practically danced on her grave?'

'Half-sister.  It was the most disgraceful display of bad manners, to say the least, I've seen in a long time.  And I'm sure she had something to do with Lyra's death.'

'Well,' the editor stops to consider and drinks down half of his pint of Bass.  It is a hot day, in an especially splendid July.  'You handled the funeral pretty well.  What do you want to do now?  Follow her; track her down?'

'I want to know what's going on.  There's something very funny here.  First all that activity, then nothing.  It's possible she's had some kind of nervous breakdown.'

'Hmmm.'

'Look, this is a matter of public interest.  I'll be careful – trust me.'

'You'd better be.  I think you're right; there is something odd, and we ought to find out.'  He lowers his voice.  'In our own interests, if nothing else.  If the BF is going belly-up there's going to be big trouble for everyone.  But Adèle…'

'Yes, boss?'

'Be careful.'

'I will.'

Aquae Sulis

The Maggie and Jimmy are moored up not far from the Pump Room, where Arthur, for reasons which Harry can only guess at, has gone to take the waters.  Refreshed, he returns to the boats and finds his partner sitting by the towpath, whittling at a stick.

'There's something wrong, isn't there?' Harry asks, seeing the look on Arthur's face.  'I mean; something else, something new.'

'We thought it was all over, when Lyra died.  Now we isn't so sure.'  Arthur enters the cabin of the Maggie and closes the door behind him.

The Dingle Peninsula

Elizabeth has been living in the old house for nearly a week now, and every day her strength and her resolution have grown.  She has eaten well – on soda bread, fruit juice and kaffee for breakfast, fish and seafood at night.  She has spent the days alone walking on the rocks and hills around the house, taking a packed lunch of sandwiches and porter in a small rucksack slung over one shoulder.  She has sat on a high pillar of stone, overlooking the sea and facing west, always west, and eaten and drunk and waited for the voice in her mind to tell Parander and her when the right time has come.  She has not hurried the voice, nor urged it to speak when it would not, but enjoyed the days and nights as they have passed by, sunlit and blue-skied, one by one this magnificent hot summer.

How calmly, how persuasively, it speaks!  How clear and necessary its words to her!

She had wondered if she would be able to sleep; but she need not have worried.  Sleep has taken her in its arms and wooed her, caressing her soul and soothing her nights with dreams of peace.  The days have been long, and full of clean air – impossible to compare with the clogged atmosphere she left behind her in the city – the nights are blessed with stars, and tranquillity, and memories of childhood.  The world of work has receded very far from her now.  Her private secretary, acting on doctor's orders, has left her alone and is waiting in Baile Atha Cliath against the time when Elizabeth is ready to return to London.

When Sunday comes, she joins the staff and the inhabitants of the nearby hamlet in the little whitewashed oratory.  Previously the ceremony of Mass has been no more than a social duty for her, long and boring, but today, of all days, she relaxes into the flow of the service and emerges from it refreshed and ready for what she must do.

There is an hour to go before lunch, and she tells Siobhan that she will go for a swim.

'Be careful, Miss Elizabeth,' the old woman warns her. 'The current can be fearfully strong by the Coign Rocks.'

'I won't go near them,' she reassures the housekeeper, and gives her a kiss and a penny, for luck.  Then she walks over the headland into the next bay, a broad crescent of pale sand facing, as it ought, due west.

She stands for a moment, looking all about her and then, as she did when she was a child, takes off her clothes and places them in a neat pile by the line of shingle which marks the high tide.  Her daemon Parander loops himself around her waist, leaving her arms free to move, and she runs down the beach and into the cool water, flinging herself forward and throwing herself into the waves as they reach her middle.

The voice has told her what she must do, and she knows that she has the strength of body to do it.  But has she the will?  This she will find out, as she swims away from the shore, keeping the sun on her left hand side and waiting for the current to take her and carry her away.  From time to time she slows and lies on her back in the water, looking at the sky, watching the seagulls soar and dip over her head, living in her dream, inhabiting the world of her imagination.

Now, says the voice.  Now is the time – the time to make an end.  Elizabeth turns back onto her front and swims with powerful strokes, heading due west.  She will swim until she can swim no more; she will not turn back, nor look back, but go on for ever.

As she leaves the little bay the current pulls her away from the shore at an extraordinary speed, and she begins to feel a terrible fear.  The voice – did it speak wisdom or folly?  The truth, or lies?  And suddenly she begins to suffer doubts.  Perhaps this is all a consequence of her bout of overwork.  She is being incredibly stupid.  She has suffered a breakdown and she has been hearing things.  It is not too late; she can turn around and strike the shore at the next headland. If she swims as hard as she ever has, if she strives as she has never done before, she will be able to save herself and end this madness which has overtaken her.  She spits the salt water out of her mouth and, gritting her teeth, prepares to return to the world of the living.

It is a desperate struggle, this fight to regain the shore, and life.  Elizabeth can feel her joints cracking, and the ache in her muscles building up higher and higher, until she begins to fear that she has left it too late and that she will never be able to make it to safety.

Minute by agonised minute she battles the current and, in the end, it is by no more than a whisker that she, passing by the headland, catches hold of a protruding rock which would have been beyond her reach had the tide been at the flood, and hangs on to it, slowly recovering the strength to pull herself up onto it, and from there to another rock, and by careful degrees to the beach, where she collapses on the sand, retching and moaning.  A gentle wind stirs the branches of a tree which stands solitary on the low cliff above her, while Time ebbs and flows around her.

After a while, she has recovered considerably and stands up, looking for landmarks so she can get back to the beach from which she started and find her clothes, when she realises that she is not alone.  A small boy, no older than eight or nine, is sitting on the grassy slope above the beach and looking at her.

He's only a little boy, Elizabeth thinks and, not bothering to hide her nakedness, she calls out to him, 'Where am I?  I left my things down the shore a bit.'  Odd, though.  She thought that the whole village had attended Mass this morning, but she does not recognise this boy.  Perhaps his family live in another village, or maybe they are tinkers, travelling from place to place.

'Are you lost?' he shouts back to her.

'Yes, I am.'

'Don't worry.  I'll take you home.  Are you hungry?  I've got fish on the fire!'

Elizabeth is starving, and reaction is starting to set in after her narrow escape from death.  She is shivering, despite the warmth of the sun.

'I'm famished!  Is it far?'  Somebody in the boy's family will lend her something to wear, she is sure, and she will be able to use her wealth to reward their kindness with a generosity which will dazzle them.

'I'll need someone to take a message to the big house,' she says, walking beside the boy.  'They'll be concerned about me.'

'Don't worry,' he replies.  'Don't worry about that.'  Elizabeth decides not to worry.

They walk together along the shoreline for nearly a mile, and Elizabeth is beginning to wonder if the boy is playing a game to make fun of her, when he raises his arm and points.  'Look!  There it is!'  Oh yes; there is a thin column of smoke rising into the air, although its source is blocked from view by the sand dunes.  Climbing to the top of the slope, Elizabeth looks down and sees a cove, with a tiny beach; just large enough to hold a small clinker-built boat, a tar-paper and driftwood shack and a fire, on which two fish are cooking.

Elizabeth follows the boy down into the cove, stepping cautiously over the rocks, aware that her feet are unprotected.  'I say!' she calls out to him.  'Have you anything I can put on?'  There will be adults in the hut, no doubt.

'Sure!  Just wait there a moment, missus!'

It has been a long time since anyone has called her "missus", but Elizabeth is content to sit on a sun-warmed rock while the boy goes into the shelter, emerging a few moments later with a piece of blue cotton which turns out to be a man's shirt; old and worn and much too broad for her, but long enough to keep her decent.

'Now!' and the boy gives her a tin plate with a large piece of fish on it – sea bass, she suspects, with its skin charred by the fire. There is a potato cake with it, and an enamel cup full of clear water.  She sits down on the beach next to the boy and begins to eat.  Both the fish and the water are utterly delicious – perhaps the best she has ever tasted.  She wolfs them down and lies back, wriggling on the sand to make herself comfortable.  The boy sits companionably next to her, wiping his plate with his fingers and licking them.

'Where are your family?' she asks him.  He turns to her, and for the first time she looks at him properly.  It is hard to tell how old he is – he could be anything from six to twelve – his face is dark and his eyes deeply sunk, so that she cannot make out their colour.  He is wearing shorts and a ragged shirt and, like her, he is barefoot.

'It's just me here.'  He jumps up and smiles down to Elizabeth where she sits.  Why don't you stay a few days?  There's plenty of room in my house!  There's two beds.  Say you will, why don't you?'

Elizabeth cannot help but be warmed by the boy's offer.  It is sorely tempting, but there is a world beyond here, and she has obligations there.

'My people, my friends, they don't know where I am.  They'll be worried.  They'll miss me.'

'Don't you worry about that, missus.  I'll tell them where you are.  I'll let them know.'

'They're at the big house – Tir-na-nÓg.  Do you know it?  It's a mile or two south of here.'

'Of course, missus.  Now; you'll stay?'

What the hell.  They will find her if they need to.  'Yes.  Thank you.  I'd love to stay.'

'Then, fáilte!  Welcome!  Come inside, and I'll show you where you can sleep.'

Sleep.  Yes, she would like to sleep.  Scarcely believing that she is doing this extraordinary thing, Elizabeth follows the boy into the warm darkness of the hut.