Maybe, he thought, I didn't know her name till I came to give her the book and write in it.

"She came from Seattle," he said.

"I know that. Go on. Please."

"It's difficult," he said.

"You fucked her, didn't you? That's what ‘came after', isn't it."

"It was a long time ago," he said again, and drew deeply on his cigar which was on the point of going out. "Why are you interested?"

She didn't answer, but took another spoonful of her ice. She really was very pretty. "Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait," he thought.

"I'm not embarrassing you, am I?" she said. "But it's all connected, that's what's so strange."

"I'm sorry, I don't follow."

He experienced a sudden hope that she had read that old novel, not merely its dedication. A ridiculous hope. What could it matter if she had? But one of the last things to die is an author's vanity. And if she had, might he not inscribe it to her in turn? "And to Kim also, years later". But — again — nothing of what had happened that long-distant hot afternoon could happen again now.

"Lindy was my mother," she said. "I should have started with that. She remembered you. Even in the Home she remembered you, and kept this book by her, as if...as if I don't know what."

What could he say?

"You speak of her in the past tense."

"Oh sure. She was happy to go. It was maybe the first thing she'd been happy to do in years. It was Kyle killed her. In a way. That's why I've made up my mind to leave him. Or not him precisely, but his book. You haven't read it, have you? You should. It's her story."

Hadn't someone said it was about incest? "My father flies in tonight, and then we're off to Greece before we go home to Seattle." There hadn't been anything ominous in the words.

"She used to talk to Kyle. He can be a good listener when there's something in it for him. She gave him her ruined life and he made use of it. That's what I can't forgive him for."

He wanted to say: it's what we do. He thought of Edward and Bobby Macrae and a novel Edward had written which they hadn't talked about that afternoon in the Colony Room. Now he wondered if Edward had given the bald man with five daughters a copy of that book when they met after so many years in Adelaide. Probably not. Edward was malicious only on paper, not in everyday life.

"Would you like a drink?" he said, and when she nodded, beckoned to the waitress and ordered a Campari-soda for her and a grappa and espresso for himself.