Collis stood outside the store, not moving, for three or four minutes. Passers-by jostled him, and mule wagons, struggling along the rutted street, ground past him in clouds of sunlit dust. But his thoughts, for those few minutes, were with Hannah, and in an equatorial garden under grey forbidding skies. His thoughts were with the kisses that might have to stay unkissed, with the hands that might never be held, with the moments of waking up next to Hannah that might never be. At last he tossed his cheroot into the road and entered the open door of the store.

It was dim inside the store, because the windows were small, and crowded with linens on display; but there was a circular skylight above the door which threw an elliptical pattern across the polished boarded floor, and on to the glass counter, where, with a tape measure around his shoulders and his hands clasped across the front of his dark-grey vest as if he were a preacher imminently about to sermonise, bearded and neat, rounded in appearance but not plump, his head slightly held to one side, stood Walter West. He was so much like the picture that Hannah had shown him on the ship that Collis found the resemblance unnerving; as if Walter West would also recognise him.

Across the counter was spread a profusion of Valenciennes laces, silk soutaches braids, silk grenadine veils, point d’ésprit dress nets, grosgrain ribbons, pongee silks and Wamsutta cambrics. There was a smell of fabric dressing and mustiness, and a faint hint of lily-of-the-valley toilet water.

Collis walked across to the counter. Walter West smiled at him and nodded. ‘Good morning. Can I help you?’

He was shorter than Collis had imagined him to be, and somehow plainer. He was, indeed, a very plain man. There were cuts on his fingers from handling threads and fabrics, and on the third finger of his left hand, a gold wedding band. It matched Hannah’s.

‘I was looking for a workbox,’ Collis said. ‘For a gift, you understand. A niece of mine. Very keen on sewing.’

Walter West pulled thoughtfully at his beard. ‘I see. Well we have a variety. It depends how much you wish to spend.’

Collis didn’t answer. He had been listening to Walter West’s voice, which was kind, but rather reedy, instead of to what he had actually been saying. He looked up and said: ‘Hm? I beg your pardon?’

‘I said, it depends how much you wish to spend. You see, we have a fancy one here, with a picture on the lid, varnished, and the inside fully lined with sateen, and that comes out at one dollar and twenty-three cents. But if you didn’t wish to lay out as much as that, this one here is plainer, but large, and it has a diamond-shaped mirror in the back, which is attractive.’