‘Incredible!’ said Guido, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes with his sleeves. ‘Forgive me, I am very emotional today. We must help.’

‘Everyone can help,’ said Francis: ‘plant a window box with seeds rather than with plants propagated with pesticides, reintroduce bison to the Carpathian Mountains, give the sea a rest, stop drowning dolphins and turtles in fishing nets, put out a birdfeeder; and between now and lunchtime, you and I can help by coming up with some ideas about how to revitalise this little park. The distribution of species is not fixed, it changes constantly with local immigrations and extinctions. Unless we insist on extinction, the natural cycles of a place are like a kaleidoscope, with pieces falling in and falling out.’

‘Ah, sí!’ said Father Guido. ‘Yes, yes, I have had this vision also, last night, it is …’ He took Francis’s hand, but seemed unable to say anything, wonder and incomprehension taking turns in his old and innocent face. ‘Forgive me, I have not the words.’

15

‘Hi, darling, let me put on my headphones,’ said Lucy. ‘“Stop radioactivity”,’ she chanted, ‘or, at least move it a little further from my brain.’

She was lying in a hammock on Hunter’s private terrace, watching a bumblebee crawl into a wisteria bell and clamber out encrusted in pollen. The other guests had gone, except for Saul, who was leaving later that day. She and Hunter would then have a few days alone; alone, that is, apart from the unavoidable Jade – she sometimes expected to find her in Hunter’s bed, with her radiant teeth, asking if there was anything she could do to help – and, of course, the Plein Soleil ‘team’, which numbered somewhere between ten and twenty, it was hard to tell, since each day new people greeted her from behind a rose bush or stood politely aside on the staircase, carrying fresh linen or bottles of mineral water.

‘So, how are you?’ she asked, when she had the phone far enough away from her to talk comfortably.

‘I’ve got some big news,’ said Olivia, ‘or, at least, some growing news.’

‘Oh my god, you are pregnant,’ said Lucy, who had already talked with Olivia over the weekend about her emphatically late period.

‘Yup.’

‘Wow,’ said Lucy, hedging between congratulations and com-passion.

‘We’re both a bit stunned.’

‘Are you still unsure what to do?’

‘It’s just that …’