But now the time has come for him to go home to his children who are his flesh. That’s the only miracle he believes in, the miraculous transubstantiation of his flesh to his children’s. It’s his last day and he has to muck out three stables before he takes the ramshackle bus to Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv Airport, in time for the night flight to Boston. Strangely, although he has lived amongst horses for five weeks, he hasn’t dreamt of his pony once. He may have lost the ability to converse with horses.

There are beginnings and there are ends, and there are also many ways of telling the same story.

Fleur is living in her house in Tuscany for the time being. She remembers Artair reciting: ‘There, everything is order and beauty’. Here, the order and beauty are her creation, all hers. She feels properly at home for the first time in her life.

Bryce comes to visit her often. They are lovers. And, more unusual, they are in love. She has given money to Morné’s charity, which supports disabled rugby players, but she hasn’t seen him since the memorial service and then it was only to shake his hand formally. Bryce is her world now. They travel when he is not required on the boat. Boris Vladykin very rarely takes Niobe out; he thinks, on reflection, that it’s a little too old-fashioned. His fellow oligarchs are not impressed by the brass push-and-pull plumbing and the narrow mahogany deck. Bryce says they don’t realise that a boat like this is a never-to-be-repeated classic, pure class. Fleur has asked him to investigate the cost of buying it back: there has not been much of a market for classic boats since the credit crisis.

Fleur is pregnant and Bryce is very happy about it. It seems he always wanted to have a child. They can’t get married because of the stipulation in Harry’s will, and she hasn’t the strength to challenge this Old Testament provision. Instead they are going to have a small, improvised blessing in the unused chapel that stands amongst cypresses on a hill behind her Tuscan house, with a few friends as witnesses. It will be followed by what Bryce calls a bounce-up at the trattoria.