So, all this time later, Dan had taken him at his word, and had evidently made Jim’s week. ‘Smashing,’ he kept saying. ‘Smashing. A nice bit of company for me. We’ll get on splendidly.’ He stood with the dog on a lead the next day to wave Dan off, and McCulloch watched him go with a committed stare, which he kept up until the very last glimpse of his beloved owner was gone. Dan could feel the dog’s eyes on his back; he could sense them, all the way down the towpath to Warwick Avenue.

At Heathrow, he left a voicemail for Alex, to let him know he’d be away, although the chances of Alex caring were close to nil, given the pace of his life in Cambridge: the work, the girls, the gigs. Nice to hear his recorded voice though; it called him very much to mind, so that Dan could see his son’s intelligent brown eyes, his charming smile, his dark, unkempt hair. They were so alike: the boy’s colouring, height, sense of humour, hopeless passion for Wednesday – all his father’s. If there’d been another baby, it would’ve looked like Katelin, Dan was sure of this, a little Celt, pale skin and reddish hair. But she’d only wanted one child, and it had to be her call in the end, although as the years had passed Dan had sometimes found himself missing the other one, missing perhaps the other two, wondering who they might have been.

He had no bag to check in, he travelled light and always with the same canvas holdall; it’d been everywhere with him, seen it all. His business-class ticket gained him a seat in a chic, capacious lounge, free newspapers, food, wine, beer, but he found himself in a contemplative mood and so he just sat in a leather armchair looking out over the tarmac, where the ground crew loaded suitcases into the belly of the plane he’d soon be on. He reflected on this leap of faith he was about to take, and considered the limits of his own certainties. He had to see Alison Connor and his belief in the feelings she had stirred in him was rock solid, yet beyond this he could not say exactly what he wanted, or how this would end. He knew he was acting selfishly, chasing her down through the lost years to see her again and discover if such a person, so perfectly constructed in body and mind to suit his own, could possibly exist. But he had to see this through. Yes, it was an act of treachery, but of all the choices, large and small, that had helped construct his life so far, none felt more imperative than his decision to fly to Adelaide from Hong Kong, to find Alison.