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Three missed calls, in quick succession – from a withheld number. It was our Signal – and I use Upper Case on purpose.

He’s in Malta! My heart missed a beat.

As I had done an untold number of times before, I called the 12-digit number I had concocted out of our combined birthdates. This hooked up to an exchange, whence it was re-directed to the self-same phone from which he had called me.

I hated this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but he had patiently explained how it was a necessary safety precaution.

Answer, dammit! I knew that the procedure involved allowing the phone to ring seven times at his end, but nonetheless I panted as I counted the beeps, waiting to for the line to connect. Click!

“Meet me at the Upper Barrakka in ten minutes, near where the Lift used to be. Hurry!” That’s all he said. Not even the usual “See-you-love-you!” which, he knew, made shivers run up and down my spine.

Oh heavens, he knows I’m pregnant. Why didn’t he pick the Lower Barrakka, just across the road? He knows I have oedema, and I tire easily - and it’s uphill all the way... I will never, ever, understand that man as long as I live.

I bunched up my hair, and jammed on my crochet beret, the one he had bought me from Paris when he was on assignment there… in 2015. He had left the Charlie Hebdo offices at 11.00a.m., because he wanted to catch the 11.15a.m. train back to his hotel.

As I struggled to put on my parka, I rapped on my neighbour’s door and told her I needed to run… I stopped short of adding “literally”. I handed her the key to the flat, and asked her to switch off the oven in fifteen minutes’ time. “Oh, do be careful!” she unconsciously looked at my tummy.

“Yes.”

“Watch out where you’re going, idiot!”  exclaimed the woman I bumped into as I turned into Saint Christopher Street.

If only you knew.

I poked out my tongue at her retreating back, and ran up the steps. I crossed Saint Ursula Street, and turned left when I got to Saint Paul Street.

I was already huffing. I counted each corner. 1, 2, 3… Incongruously, at the back of my mind, there were those dreary history lessons in which I had learned how all the streets of Valletta, except for the coast road, were at right angles to one another.

However, learning their position on a map was extremely difficult – I have dyslexia.

My English Language teacher had mocked me in front of the whole class when, during the Careers Convention, I had declared I intended to become a journalist.

“You can’t even read a Primer!” she’d snorted, and on cue, all of my classmates, except for Shirley, had sniggered. They wanted to gain Brownie points from her.  She had taken an instant dislike to me, and I only found out the reason years afterwards… a boy she fancied had totally ignored her, and dated my sister, instead. So… I was the recipient of her spleen.

Eventually, my name had appeared on the front page of The Malta Daily. I had written a story about how ghostly presences had been seen walking - floating, actually - along Saint Barbara Bastions. The wraiths had appeared during the daytime as well as at night – so there was no question of their being candid camera holograms.

The said teacher had actually called my Editor to say that someone must be ghost-writing my articles. He laughed, because he found the repeated use of “ghost” amusing. She went ballistic, and threatened to get him fired; and this convinced him even more that she was a nutcase.

She sputtered that I was a cheat and an impostor, and that I was dyslexic, and that disabled people should not be allowed to trick their way into jobs because people pitied them… and so on and so forth. When he managed to get a word in edgewise, my Editor reassured her that I had compiled the story in the Press Room, and added, for good measure, that anyway, it was none of her business how he chose to place copy in the paper.

She had slammed down the phone, and he had paged me to tell me what happened.

“…A medium had sworn he’d been contacted by ‘foreigners’ who were against the proposed underground track service, since it would desecrate their final resting places. The people who had proposed it said he was talking bunkum - but it turned out that a prison for slaves had existed in that general area at the time of the Knights of Saint John.

Not many people noticed that, one Sunday morning, a priest had visited the site, said some prayers and sprinkled some holy water from an asperses over the bastion sill…”

I had been looking out of my bedroom window - and included the incident in my report. Talk about Primary Sources!

He’ll think I’m not coming.

I gasped, and began climbing the shallow steps in the upper part of Saint Paul’s Street. People were looking inquiringly at my flushed face, and, no doubt, my swollen belly. I was actually on maternity leave, but at a subliminal level I realised that I (also!) wanted to one-up the silly journalist from the rival paper with what I knew would be a scoop.

Once at the very top of Saint Paul Street, I took a deep breath and ran all the way to the entrance of the gardens, heading toward the back.

“You made it!”

I caught my breath. It struck me simultaneously that he looked deathly pale, and that he did not get up to hug me (I always told him that within his arms was the safest place in the world for me). It was only then that I noticed he was sitting in a wheelchair. I flinched.

“They broke both my legs. And then kneecapped me, to make sure I never walked again... But it doesn’t matter. Here, take this,” he said, as he handed me a huge manila envelope, no doubt bulging with secrets.

He put his hands gently on either side of my belly. Our child moved. “Leave. Now.”

“No!” I said.

He shook his head; and suddenly the wheelchair was empty. I felt, instinctively, that for the baby’s sake, it would be better if I left immediately.

Returning home via Saint Ursula Street, I heard a commotion. People screamed, but because the street curves, I could not see what was happening.

I retrieved my key from my neighbour (who had meanwhile folded my laundry and put the kettle on), and sat down on the bed. I was in shock.

I didn’t even realise I had switched on my laptop and Googled his name, until I had actually done so.

The first link that came up was his obituary. He had died five months previously, in a freak accident on an assignment in Brussels. I had been used to him not contacting me because of… well, things… so I hadn’t been worried about it.

I turned away from the screen, and retched.

Later, I riffled through the contents of the envelope. Oh. Wow. I will make my Editor’s hair curl – no matter that he’s bald!

In the 8.00p.m. news bulletin, the newscaster said that an SUV had skidded to a halt just in front of the public garden gate. Two thugs wearing balaclavas had dashed out, leaving the doors open, and ran into the gardens, guns blazing.

Nobody was hurt, except for an old woman who was pushed aside, and fell, by one of the criminals because she was in his way.

And the contents of the envelope had worldwide repercussions.