He glanced at the bed, looked hurriedly away. He poured himself more whisky and carried his glass to the window, looked out, looking at nothing. Jane and Thorpe! Here! Perhaps in this very room! The place of union! The bower of bliss! The . . .

He could not get the word “fucking” out of his head. He was afraid he would say it—that Emily would ask some perfectly innocent question and he would say it. Fucking. Would it be funny? He was sure it would not.

“Is it raining?” she asked.

“Mmm?”

“Is it raining?”

“No,” he said.

“I thought I could hear rain.”

“No. But no stars now so perhaps it is on its way.”

They sat at the table to eat. They were too tired to eat much but wanted something. They chewed the hard bread, cut thin slices from the questionable cheese. In the lamplight their movements were feathered, smoothed in air, delayed, golden. He asked her about Spinkey. It was, he knew, a way of asking about her sister and Thorpe, but she could not tell him anything else, though she thought the girl who showed them up might be Spinkey’s daughter.

“It’s strange though, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?”

He shook his head. He didn’t really know. Something to do with how unlikely it was, the two them being together in a room in Oban. All the things that had led to it. Her father, his. The war. Her eyes. Endless decisions and coincidences. The thought excited him briefly, felt important, then commonplace.

“Do you think,” he said, “Cornelius has found the other ear yet?”

“Or a nose?”

“A . . . ?”

“Dug up a nose.”

“Ah, a nose would be excellent. Even better than an ear.”

“He will have to stitch the poor man together again,” she said. “That will give us occupation for the winter,” said Lacroix. “I will sew on the feet, you may do the hands. Cornelius himself must have the honour of reattaching the head. When Thorpe comes you can make him a present of it.”

She laughed, then said, “So you think you might spend a winter with us, John?”