‘If I’m hungry. It’s up and down.’

The next day he knocked on the door and for a moment they stood on the porch in their good clothes, looking at each other. Lunch was an unusual scheme. They went to their favourite restaurants, one after the other, ordering light. First, Valia’s choice: a seafood bistro. Then to a taverna that Lucky had discovered the previous year. What they didn’t eat they took home. Finally, Lucky made them coffee at her house. They avoided the subject of Achilles. Ex-husband Robert was mentioned only indirectly: he had three children from a previous marriage, and they’d been raised in this home, along with Sophia, and at their mother’s house in the Blue Mountains, which was bigger, and where they had their own rooms. For the first time Lucky heard the stepchildren’s names. He’d imagined their family as comprising a decent husband, the extraordinary wife, and the children, mostly sublime. Nothing she said denied him this old picture. But he didn’t need to hear a great deal about the past. They weren’t catching up. They were racing towards happiness and death. And there was too much past.

Valia did mention the fire at the Achillion: she had told her daughter Sophia about the letter from Ian Asquith. She should know what happened to her aunt, said Valia. Lucky left the subject in the air. Valia let it drop.

That afternoon, at the door, she asked: ‘Why didn’t you marry again? Did you find anyone?’

‘No, I didn’t love anyone else,’ said Lucky.

‘But how is that possible?’

Lucky didn’t answer; he didn’t know the answer. He shook his head. But if he was here, at Valia’s home, had he truly failed in love?

The following day he called and asked whether she thought it was a good idea for them to see each other again.

‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I think it’s the best idea I’ve heard in years.’

‘It is? I’m supposed to be leaving on Friday but I’ll cancel my holiday.’

‘Don’t cancel. You’re away only ten days and I’ll be here when you get back. Yesterday I told the home care nurse you had a holiday already planned. I’m not going to die in the next month. That nurse has seen a lot of pancreatic patients and she says I’m doing much better than most. I will be here next year, I think.’