‘That’s exactly what my father thought,’ said Martha, sitting up suddenly. ‘One in a hundred of us hears voices or becomes demented in some way because our mental machinery hasn’t settled in yet. It’s too new. Some mutation made us much more aware than we had any need to be. But because the abrupt change made its possessors so successful, they outbred the others and it soon became standard in the population.’

‘What did?’

‘This freakishness you’re talking about.’

For the first time since Anton had known her, Martha let her enthusiasm ride over her reserve. ‘When Charlotte and I were small my father used to tell us a story about all the fish in the sea. The mackerels looked different from the herrings and the sardines, but they all lived the same fishy lives, really – for millions and millions of years. Then one day Poseidon gave a magic gift to a single sprat. The sprat could talk, though only the other sprats could understand him. He and his wife gave birth to lots of little fish, and soon all sprats in the ocean could talk. But they still lived in the sea. Talking didn’t help. The whales still ate all the krill and the bottom feeders still lay on the seabed. This talking business was completely unnecessary for sprat life to prosper under the waves. All they really needed was a food supply, like the one they’d had for the last ten million years – and still had. Furthermore, it turned out Poseidon had been in a hurry and the gift was a bit dashed off. Not very secure. One in a hundred sprats was deafened by the sound of other sprats talking – even though there was not a sprat in sight! It’s true some sprats composed fishy poems and nice sea shanties, but most of them just talked themselves into making armies to attack their fellow sprats. And the other fish – the bass and the brill and the octopus – just looked on in amazement. And then, as far as they could, they ignored the talking sprats altogether.’

‘So what was wrong with Poseidon’s gift?’

‘My father was a bit unclear on the detail. Something about mutations taking time to settle. A pterodactyl didn’t turn into a jackdaw overnight, he liked to say.’

Neither of them spoke for a while. Anton hoped, for once, to hear the church bell strike. Eventually, he coughed. ‘I hadn’t expected psychoanalysis to be like this.’

Martha looked down at her desk for a moment. ‘I don’t normally talk that much.’

‘No.’

‘I try not to talk at all if possible.’

‘No, I enjoyed your story. I just thought the whole thing might be a bit less … You know.’

‘Piscine?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Of course. Let’s go back to humans. You were saying …’

‘The book. Adam’s Lot. Well … I enjoyed giving descriptions of the places I’d visited in more detail. Evoking the life of the place by the habits of the people – what they eat and so on. Very few Austrians have been to New York, I think. So just an idea of the layout of the streets, the tarry smell, the separate occupations or nationality in each small neighbourhood and so on … I felt I had to carry readers with me. Have you ever eaten Chinese food?’