Silver had made a booking for two single rooms at a hotel in Sydney. He found it among the cheaper one-star hotels in a guide book called Australia on a Shoestring. On Wednesday the 22nd he’d go to the taxi rank in Warwick Avenue and take a taxi around to 4 Torrington Gardens. He wouldn’t have Andrew or Alison bring Jason down but would go up himself to fetch him. We still had no idea when the Nylands would be back, Sean didn’t know, but it was most likely they would be home by the 22nd, Exodus Day One. I know this sounds ageist, but there’s no doubt it’s much easier dealing with old people in this sort of situation than with young ones. Mr. and Mrs. Nyland’s eyesight and hearing would be less good than ours, they would probably need to rest at times during the day, they would move far more slowly than we did, be less quick to react and less vigorous. Taking Jason downstairs must involve passing their front door but Silver would hear their footsteps inside that door, hear the no-longer-quite-steady hand fumble at the catch, and either race Jason down or pull him back up. They were not a hazard.

Sean would be away shooting his series. In any case, he had more or less undertaken a passive role. We hoped for a wet day or a foggy day. Darkness would be even better but the flight was a midafternoon one. It was a pity we had to take a taxi but we knew no one with a motor vehicle we could take into our confidence except Jonny and we both thought he was far enough into our confidence already. Morna could drive. We decided to ask Morna if she could borrow her mother’s car and drive it to Heathrow; it would be a better idea than the taxi.

The biggest danger was passing through passport control. Silver thought a lot depended on keeping one’s cool while the man or the woman scrutinized Jason’s passport, looked them both up and down, and maybe went away briefly into some inner office. He could only do his best, he said. Once they were through and on that plane, most of their troubles were over. My task was to get Andrew and Alison out on Exodus Day Two, and I must first check that they looked like their passport photos, then that the baggage they were taking wasn’t over the weight limit. We hoped that nothing untoward would happen, such as assessing how much extra they had to pay on the surplus kilos, which might draw attention to them.