It is hard for Logan to credit he is talking to the same person who eviscerated him in the Battle of Trafalgar only six weeks ago. Or the same person from any part of Tom’s fury-fuelled existence. This version of Tom has never previously existed, to his knowledge. Little wonder he didn’t recognize this son whose face, free of the tensions of unexpressed rage, has arranged itself differently.

This is the Anesthine talking?

Tom is undoubtedly watching something else.

I don’t know. Is it?

You were different before, Logan persists. Angry.

Okay. If you say so.

Strange not to touch on his anger. Like stepping on the grass at the edge of a pond and discovering it’s duckweed that gives beneath your feet.

You don’t remember?

Tom gifts him a few seconds of eye contact.

Kind of. It just doesn’t feel important. Only now is important.

Like mindfulness, thinks Logan. Like that Zen claptrap.

Only now? he says.

His son nods vaguely.

The past is like a dream or something.

So you’re not – Logan hesitates. This is a dangerous test – still blaming me for the death of your mother?

His son looks at him blankly.

Why would I do that?

Logan looks for tension in Tom’s hands, shoulders; for small acts of destruction. But his son’s fingers are untroubled. The sweetener packets that Logan placed on the table remain unmolested.

You remember what happened, right?

I don’t remember you leaving. I was two.

But your mum? You remember what happened with your mum?

He watches his son’s eyes blinking, a cat in the sunlight.

I remember finding her on her bed, covered in vomit. But that was, what, when I was— I don’t know, much later, wasn’t it?

You were eight.

So six years after you left. Not really connected.

No?

I don’t think so. Do you?

Mei Mei reappears as though beamed in.

Look. She grins, opening the mouth of her bag so that Tom can see whatever it was she picked up.

Very nice, says Tom. Their look shares a secret as she closes it again. We should go, Tom says to his father. Stuff to do. See you.

Logan gets up for their leaving – clasped hands from her, no more than a nod from Tom – and for a while after they have vanished he remains standing, watching after the effect of them, the way one might watch a rainbow fade until not a trace of it remains. Anesthine, then. A fortuitous meeting at exactly the moment he was stuck with a question has given him the answer. Anesthine.