They lived, as most city people did, in a modest apartment. One floor up, a communal well in the courtyard, a small set of rooms to arrange as they liked. Petro, who was handy with a hammer, had fixed the place up in shipshape style. Maia had always had her own casual glamour and, given her work for Pa at the Saepta, she furnished it with dash. Our mother’s house centred on its kitchen and a table where onions were always being chopped; Helena and I liked to relax in private in a room where we read together. Any house where Maia lived had a balcony as its heart. There she kept a trough of plants that could survive breezes and offhand treatment, plus battered lounging chairs with mounds of well-squashed cushions, between which was the bronze tripod where she served a constant supply of nuts and raisin cake.

I wondered if Anacrites had been allowed into that insiders’ sanctum this time. He knew how things worked. The damage to Maia’s previous much-loved sun terrace, when he trashed her place, had been particularly vile.

Helena had come with me tonight. Maia greeted her with a sniff. ‘Oh he’s brought a woman to worm out all the secrets, has he? You think I’ll be softened up by girls’ chat?’

Helena gave an easy-going laugh. ‘I’ll sit with the children.’ We had glimpsed them, doing schoolwork in subdued silence: Maia’s four, who ranged from six to thirteen, plus Petronilla, Petro’s girl, who lived here most of the time now because her mother had a new boyfriend. Petronilla had condemned Silvia’s latest conquest as ‘a lump of mouldy dough’. She was eleven and already scathing. So far, Petro was still her hero, though he expected daddy’s little girl to begin disparaging him any day now.

A shadow darkened Maia’s face. ‘Yes,’ she said urgently. ‘Yes, Helena. Do that.’ So the children knew Anacrites had been here, and they needed comfort.

I was shepherded to the balcony. Maia closed the folding doors behind us. We sat together, in our usual positions.

‘Right. You had a visitation. Tell me.’

Now we were private, I could see how badly Maia was shaken. ‘I don’t know what he wanted. Why now, Marcus?’

‘What did he say he wanted?’

‘Explaining is not his style, brother.’