In San Francisco, the late morning southbound traffic moved at walking speed towards Market Street. Larry Valentine drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his dark green Thunderbird ‘Town Landau’, and watched, through green-tinted windows, a huddle of elderly Chinese playing mah-jong in the park, using a bench as a table. Tomorrow evening he would take Ella up to Chinatown for her piano lesson with Mr Yip. The lessons had been Professor Hoffmann’s idea and were intended to help the girl express herself, to bring her out of her shell. Hoffmann had recommended Yip, who was almost as expensive as Hoffmann, but after eight months of classes, during which Ella had learned the first fifteen bars of ‘Clair de Lune’ and a piece called ‘Mr Xao’s Magic Garden’, she remained the same determinedly introverted child she had always been. The thought of flying to England with her was not comfortable. Ten hours in the cigar tube and who knew what they might find at the other end.

On 4th the traffic eased, and by the time he was on 101 he was travelling south at a steady 60 mph (a good speed for an old car), the sun breaking off the waters of the bay to his left. He felt for a cigarette from the pack on the passenger seat, lit it, and turned the radio from the talk on KPFA to KYCY in search of some country-and-western, a type of music he had once thought risible but now found soothing and honest. From here it was a twenty-minute drive to the airport, long enough to preview the day ahead of him and to think seriously of turning the car around and going back into the city. There was a bar below Broadway with a cool, woody interior, and two or three tables outside for the smokers. Or Mario’s, where he could eat focaccia and resume his nodding acquaintanceship with Francis Coppola. He could even go home. After all, he would have the place to himself (two six-packs of Red Tail in the fridge), while Kirsty was at the zendo in Japantown, cross-legged on a mat, solving riddles and learning to breathe.