‘It’s not even nine in the morning,’ Anouk said, nodding at Red’s bottle.

‘I’ve been up since five,’ said Red, taking a swig.

‘Ah.’

‘Fraser’s been telling me about the priest and the mountain.’

‘The monk and the mountain,’ said Fraser, his mouth full of eggs.

‘Get a load of this,’ said Red. He patted the chair next to him and Anouk sat. ‘So there’s this Buddhist monk or whatever, he starts climbing a mountain at sunrise, he wants to get to his temple at the very top. Sometimes he walks quickly, sometimes he slows down. He takes breaks. Maybe once or twice he has a nap. He’s a monk; there’s no rush. Eventually he gets to the top though, just before sunset. He stays up there maybe a week, and then when it’s time to go down, he leaves again at sunrise.’ Red stopped, hand aloft and hovering by the temple at the top of the mountain, and looked at Fraser. ‘He stays about a week?’

‘Doesn’t matter how long he stays.’

‘Right. So when he’s ready, he leaves again at sunrise and walks back down to the bottom, average speed faster because he’s descending.’ Red stopped talking, took another sloop of beer and grinned at Anouk.

‘So?’

‘So,’ he said, ‘Fraser showed me the solution to prove that there is one spot precisely, along that mountain path, one spot the monk will have occupied on both ascent and descent, at the exact same time of day. You think it’s impossible, right? Without knowing the monk’s speed or the length of either journey?’

Anouk shrugged. Her father’s eyes sparkled with nonsense and she was confused. She looked to Fraser for help, but Fraser was folding bacon into his mouth and offered none.

‘He proved it with a graph.’ Red reached across the table, and pulled towards him a napkin on which was scribbled a series of black lines. He waved it at her. ‘Bisecting lines and some calculus that I vaguely remember from school.’

Anouk raised her eyebrows at Fraser.

‘I’ve been reading a bit of mathematics,’ he said, without apology. ‘You guys got any ketchup?’

‘In the fridge,’ said Anouk.

‘You’ve gone all moody,’ Red said. ‘Is it because of the tree?’

‘I don’t care about the tree,’ she said.

‘Fraser, tell her the rest about the monk.’

Fraser rummaged in the refrigerator door and sat back at the table with a bottle of ketchup. He held it above his plate and turned it over, slapped its base definitively with his palm. ‘If the monk were two, if you could track his original journey up the mountain, as if there were an apparition of him hiking up from the bottom at the same moment the real guy hikes down from the top, the monk and his apparition would have to cross paths at some point along the path, regardless of their variable speeds, proving there is a point on the mountain he would occupy at exactly the same time of day on both trips.’