Each death is the severing of a connection, though there are too many of those for him to become completely untethered. He searches his e-mail for a photo of his father, and finds one Janet sent a few years ago, at one of the boys’ birthday parties. He is smiling vaguely, perhaps not completely sure where he is, as a slab of cake is placed in front of him. A harmless old man.

Now, finally, tears prickle his eyes, and he lets them flow where they will. No point thinking about the conversations they never had. Both of them had decades in which to reach out to each other. There were terse phone calls, birthday cards approximately once every three years, and messages passed on via Janet. So much lost. Questions are already forming in his mind, things he wishes he’d asked when there were answers to be had. Never mind. Make the best of it. He cries himself empty, and drags himself to bed.

The next day passes in a welter of errands, and then he is meeting Revathi at the airport. The rigmarole of security, judicious use of the sample moisturisers at Duty Free—“Airplanes dry out your skin,” he says defensively, as she raises an eyebrow at him—and onto their Singapore Airlines flight, which may or may not still be the best in the industry, but is comfortingly familiar. They are flying eastward, into the night, and not long after take-off it has grown completely dark.

•

“You only come home when someone dies,” says Janet at the airport, and Henry can think of no rebuttal. He was last in Singapore for Uncle Barnaby’s funeral almost a decade ago, but he didn't stay long enough to visit. He’s been terribly negligent, only seeing his nephews occasionally on Skype, and briefly when Kevin was over in London on a school trip. There’s so much that can be deferred indefinitely.

He hands over the bags containing her demands: lemon biscuits from Fortnum and Mason’s, Earl Grey from Whittard, blackcurrant jam from Harrod’s. Janet has very specific tastes. She nods thanks, and slings them into the boot along with their suitcases. She could probably have got all of that on Amazon, but she also has old-fashioned views about familial duty, one of which is that her brother is obliged to supply all her British needs, otherwise what’s the point of him living there?

Janet has a civil servant’s car, clean but cluttered with papers and books. Revathi has to shove some garish hardback folders out of the way to squeeze into the back seat. When he asks what’s in them, Janet rolls her eyes. “Policy documents. I need to read them to know roughly what’s happening, in case Minister happens to ask me in a meeting or something. Waste of time, they’ll change it all in a couple of years.”

“Do you miss teaching?” Revathi asks.

“No. I don’t like kids.”