Alice allowed him to lead her into the orchard, even though she had seen it all before with Eva.

JUDGE: Alice was a great help to Eva – Eva herself makes this claim in her notebooks. And yet you disapproved? You didn’t like her?

TARA: Who, Alice? There’s not much to say but, yes, I guess we were suspicious of her at first, another Eva hanger-on. I personally found it irritating how she was always asking questions about the islands. She was ignorant about some things, and over-informed about others. I felt at times like we were being studied.

JUDGE: But Eva wanted somebody to record everything you women had done together.

TARA: [Frowns] Of course, it’s no big deal.

After the banners were dropped, Tara looked down at the garden, at the minister, Zoe’s father, and Alice, and Nina and Mariam and Lucija. Even the amazing lawn dancing stopped for a moment. Her heart was thumping. Zabardast. They’d done it. Stella was practically jumping for joy – it had all been a success – the banners were fluttering from the roof as graciously as Tibetan prayer flags from a stupa. Tara glanced at Zoe. She had wanted to involve Zoe in the action, from the start, not just because it was convenient to, but because it was important for her to take part. Tara knew that Zoe could see the logic of this. But still, it was her father they were attacking with their granite immovable principles.

‘Well done, comrades,’ Stella said to them both. Tara was happy to see her all abuzz. ‘Hey, Zoe, wasn’t it cool?’ Stella said. ‘We told you it was going to be great, didn’t we? And now I’m going to ring Ravi, OK? To make sure he’s on it with the tweets.’

The other two nodded.

‘Look, your father’s going into the orchard,’ Tara said. ‘Do you want to go and talk to him? Explain ourselves? See if we can get a good interview?’

They took off their black outfits, and got back into their jeans, and bundled everything into bags.

As they came downstairs, they saw the photographer and his assistant in the hall, looking puzzled. ‘Guys, do you know where the Burne-Jones painting of the sea nymphs is? We’re supposed to be photographing the minister in front of it.’ Zoe and Tara shrugged. The men looked back down at their cameras and light meters. ‘Well, can you tell the minister that we need him in about ten minutes?’

Zoe and Tara walked out into the porch, blinking in the sunlight.