Luckily (for me), Mrs Meadows had now acquired a series of notebooks which (when she wasn’t plumping up my pillows and making inedible snacks) she spent every spare moment writing in and poring over. She had developed a theory about the coat. It related to the history of what she called ‘Cyberspace’, which, when I interrogated her about it, she said ‘didn’t really mean anything – at least not in fact, only in fiction’ (she cited William Gibson’s Neuromancer). She said that the coat was like a ‘giant circuit board’ of modern communications theory, that it was at once a coherent whole and a series of completely separate narratives. She said it all depended on how close you were, or how far away. She said it sent out different messages from varying perspectives. On two occasions she called it ‘the ultimate undecidable problem!’ and then laughed, hysterically.

I can’t pretend I really got the joke.

Mrs Meadows planned (with my express permission) to take the coat on a visit to see her friend in San Francisco, to show it to her friend’s husband, who, so far as I could tell, worked for the government. I had agreed to fly with her. Was it only because I feared that unless I kept her close the golden dust would … would envelop me? For good? Or perhaps because I was in a state of ‘deep denial’ about my actual feelings for her (same as I had been with Miss Hahn, remember?)? Or simply because I wouldn’t – couldn’t – in all good conscience, be parted from that infernal coat again.

It was just something I felt I … I needed to do. For Miss Hahn. To try and make it up to her. To undo the casual wrong … to … to care for the stupid coat as I secretly longed to care for … Even if Miss Hahn didn’t know – never knew – I would protect it for her. Guard it for her. For her. Just for her. Not for any of the others. Not for Bran or Kalinda or Brother Prosper or the child. Just for her. Exclusively. Just for Miss Hahn.

It was time for me to move on. My lease of the cottage was almost at an end. And Mrs Barrow had informed me (in no uncertain terms – Mrs Barrow was incapable of uncertainty) that I would need to vacate the place promptly. Miss Hahn had other tenants booked in. A couple that visited the area every year and viewed the cottage as a kind of ‘second home’.

So Mrs Meadows and I (well, Mrs Meadows) booked our flights. And she helped me to pack. And she cooked a strange ham and turkey strudel which tasted of stale spaghetti and deep misgivings.

As for Miss Hahn … Ah. Let’s just say that a natural decency (decency being a virtue that has never come all that naturally to me) had compelled me to keep my distance. I had reached out. I had made my grand gesture of reconciliation. I had given her the photos. That was the thing she’d always wanted – longed for, craved. Not the photos themselves, of course, but the past. Hermetically sealed. Beautifully preserved. Immaculately maintained. In a series of manageable stills.