The children crowd around Lindquist’s lap. I start to turn for the door, give them all a bit of privacy, but Sandy chooses to lift her head and blink at me. Her eyes are cloudy and sort of confused. Probably they’ve slipped her something to make her comfortable. We should all be so lucky. I step forward and reach between limbs to give the old furball a little scratch around the ears, the way she likes, and wish her Godspeed.

Then I head back outdoors and light a cigarette, which I smoke in long, deep drags, staring through the fronds of the palm to the blue sky above.

After our last walk through the streets of Paris, Velázquez delivered me to my room at the Scribe, but he kept his clothes on. He said I had had too much to drink, and would neither enjoy nor remember the occasion properly, and he wanted our last time in bed to be memorable, like it had been four days ago when I had driven out to the airfield to meet him. I asked if he would lie with me until I fell asleep. He hesitated and then agreed.

I remember I put on my nightclothes and swallowed some aspirin with water before I climbed into bed, as was my habit when I was drunk. Velázquez stayed dressed atop the covers, so he wouldn’t be tempted, he said. He put his arm around me, however, and I laid my head on his chest. I told him I was sorry about his fiancée, and he thanked me gravely.

“But it was selfish of me to tell you that story,” he said. “It’s a terrible, tragic story, and I should not have added to your burden.”

“Why did you tell me, then?” I asked.

“Because I want someone else to remember her, in case I am killed. I want someone else to know that she was alive, and how she died.”

“Don’t say stupid things like that. You won’t be killed.”

He reached for his cigarettes on the nightstand and lit one. He told me to go to sleep, and that’s the last thing I remember about Velázquez, his solemn voice commanding me to sleep, and the smell of his cigarette, those pungent Gauloises he used to smoke, the smell of good-bye.

I make straight for the cottage when we return to Coolibah. The yellow Ford is parked out front—Olle’s come home—and so is Leo’s moped, and I can’t face either of them, I really can’t. I am only just held together by a thread.