They could hear a clatter below stairs as Ali, who had also been watching the sea, brought out the trunks and boxes. It was as if the house were tumbling down around them, and the vultures took off from the roof, rattling the corrupted-iron as though they felt the tremor in the walls. Scobie said, ‘While you are sorting your things upstairs, I’ll pack your books.’ It was as if they had been playing these last two weeks at infidelity, and now the process of divorce had them in its grasp: the division of one life into two: the sharing out of the sad spoils.
