Emily found a table at the window of the cafe in the shopping mall. A full taxi rank lay adjacent to the cafe, the drivers slouched in their seats, windows down, their arms slung on the doors like swimmers clinging to the side of a pool. Sophia, who’d suggested the location, arrived and sat with a handbag on her lap, her hair a little wet, and Emily recognised the mint and cetrimide smell of the same shampoo that she herself used in London. It was still an incredible notion, to Emily, that here was a stranger, the survivor of the Third of April, and you could ask about her life and she would tell you a story.

Sophia looked at Emily, evaluating her. What did she see? No, Emily was growing tired of this question, of looking outside herself for a sense of herself as if it were a sound way to feel part of the world, to be in another person’s company, when it was a metric for undervaluing or overvaluing everyone.

Sophia said: ‘Lucky called and said he felt comfortable around you, like an old friend.’

‘I like him too, but at times I wonder whether he’s being entirely truthful with me. At first he lied about his gambling.’

‘He fell to pieces after the shooting, like me. Christ knows how much money he pissed away. You know what happens to gamblers—they lose. He’s ashamed. He lies because of shame.’

And his lie about Ian Asquith, was that out of shame, too? ‘Another thing, and this isn’t for the New Yorker article, Lucky said he didn’t know my father, but I suspect they might have met each other. Does the name Ian Asquith sound familiar to you?’

‘It doesn’t,’ said Sophia, and she appeared convincing, seemed genuinely not to register the name. On the walls of the cafe were fan mirrors and walnut veneer panels, which created a gloomy mood of seniority, like the business was here first, before the taxi rank, before the mall.

‘I had to ask. Now, I want to understand your connection to Lucky: he was your mother’s first husband. When did you start working for him?’

‘After Mum died, Lucky offered me a job, because at the time I was out of work and I had a small child. I was a single mother. My half-brother and half-sisters wanted to sell Mum’s house straightaway and split the money. None of them live in Sydney. We sold the house and my money went into childcare and rent and bills and I needed a job. Lucky came through. The shifts were flexible. He’s good like that.’

‘He and your mother stayed in touch after the marriage ended?’

‘No, but they were close at the very end. Lucky held a candle for about forty years.’

‘I wonder what it was like for Lucky, to have those feelings for so long?’