One of the nuns, a thin girl with pale-blue eyes and translucent skin, gave him a nod of acknowledgment and directed the porter, in patois, to lift Hannah down from the train. The porter had a gold ring through one ear, and scabs on his legs. He stepped up into the ladies’ compartment and carried Hannah down as if she were a small frail child. Collis could only watch.

‘Does she have papers?’ asked the nun with the pale-blue eyes.

‘I guess so,’ Collis said. ‘They’re in her bag, more than likely. Her name’s Hannah West. She was going to join her husband in San Francisco.’

The nun nodded.

‘You’re going to take her into hospital?’ asked Collis.

‘Yes. It will ease her suffering.’

‘You think she’s going to die?’

The nun paused. Hannah was lifted carefully into the basket chair, her face white and fitful, her hands drawn up in front of her as if she were fending off some imagined animal. The drone of noise in the depot seemed to grow worse, and more irritating, and the locomotive let out a hideous bellow of steam.

‘She has the yellow fever,’ said the nun. She sounded French, or Belgian. ‘With her constitution, there is no doubt what her fate must be. But the Lord will have mercy on her soul, and give her peace in heaven.’

For the first time, Collis understood that Hannah might actually be dead within a few days. He put his hand to his forehead, but his face felt frozen, incapable of any expression. He was detached from himself, someplace else altogether, listening to this strange nun in a building that was as close to Purgatory as he could imagine. He saw the Jamaican porter wheeling Hannah away, accompanied by two of the three nuns, and it was just as if a whole part of his own life were being carried off in front of his eyes, whole days and weeks of possibilities, of possible love and possible sympathy, of shared meals and shared laughter, of kisses and murmurs and tears.

Standing there, in the depot of Panama City, he abruptly burst into tears. It was partly the strain of staying with Hannah, and Maria-Mamuska’s hostility. But it was also a desperate feeling of loss. To see Hannah taken away from him was like attending her funeral, and he didn’t even have a flower to lay on her grave. He turned away from the nun who had remained behind, biting his lip with grief; but the nun touched his hand with her hand, cool and damp with perspiration, and he calmed himself and took a couple of deep breaths.

‘It was brave of you to stay with her,’ said the nun. ‘Perhaps you had better come up to the hospital for a day or two, to make sure that you haven’t contracted the disease yourself. It spreads so quickly.’

Collis wiped his eyes and nodded.