He opened his eyes and she was looking at him, bathing him in one of her smiles. She was possessed of a warm and generous spirit, and this was part of what made her beautiful still. When Lisa looked in your eyes, when she concentrated on you alone, it was a special feeling, like having essential oils massaged into your temples. If it wasn’t for the fact that it meant he’d now be an old man, he wouldn’t have minded finding Lisa himself when she was twenty, and hitching his horse to the same wagon. Frank had struck gold, back there in that ashram. He might have strayed, but it couldn’t have been very far, or for very long.

‘Tell me about Alison,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything you can about her.’

Oh, this was kind, and unexpected, and for a few moments Dan felt in embarrassing danger of crying with gratitude at her question, which was so simple, yet so bloody welcome. To talk about Alison, who she was, what she looked like, how she’d made him feel, what she’d meant to him, how they’d connected: this was what he needed, because the longer he went without being able to do so, the harder it was to trust his own judgement. He talked a torrent, and Frank didn’t even feign interest, just fell asleep, but Lisa listened closely and when Dan stopped she said, ‘You really miss her,’ and it was a statement of fact not a question, but Dan gave a low groan and said, ‘Like I’d miss my limbs.’

‘Show me how on earth you send a song to Australia,’ she said, and he laughed and reached for his phone, opening Twitter to show her the ropes, and she watched with a vaguely concerned expression as if there might be a test at the end of the demo. Because he knew she’d remember Donovan, he found ‘Sunshine Superman’, copied the link and pasted it on to the thread he and Ali had made, which was still there, intact, untouched. He hadn’t been asked by Katelin to delete anything, and he wouldn’t have agreed to it if he had. One thing to be said about shopping himself before discovery, he reckoned, was a continued right to a decent level of privacy. He was no longer in touch with Ali Connor; this was all he’d felt obliged to say to Katelin, who knew nothing about these songs, anyway. Lisa stared at the screen and the links looked like a form of algebra to her, unconnected in any comprehensible way to what she understood a song to be.

‘Has she got it now, then?’ she asked.