“What a troublemaker you are. People had paid to attend her classes but she refused to get out of bed. You showed her something was possible, some intensity of feeling with a man, and you took it away again. She would send for me and we’d talk about you for hours, wondering who you were. She would rage and weep. The only relief was when that man from the boat came to see her.”

“Man?”

“The playboy. Matte.”

“Alicia, what happened?”

“I was sent out of the room. I heard everything from outside the window.”

“And?”

“You owed him something, he said. He wouldn’t say what it was. You didn’t borrow money from him?” I shook my head. “He wanted to find you, wanted to know whether there was anyone who knew you.”

“Did he threaten Patricia?”

“He didn’t need to. She was delighted to talk about the intricacies of your character, insofar as she understood it, for hours. Not that this interested Matte. Of course, she doesn’t know where you are. I left the island a few days later and went to Athens.”

“Were you followed?”

“Why would I be? What’s going on?” Alicia said. “You know what Patricia wanted? For you to run the place with her.”

“I’d have liked to do that,” I said. “For a while. It would have been fun. Impossible, too, of course, with her attitude toward me.”

“You’d have done it?” she said. “Don’t you have any doubts?”

“What?”

“About yourself. About what you are capable of? That makes you different to a lot of people. Different to most people, in fact.”

“Yes,” I said, “I do have doubts. I just don’t want them getting in the way of my mistakes.”

She said, “Something else happened. I haven’t told you the whole story. When you disappeared from the boat that last night—”

“Yes, sorry. I couldn’t stand it—”

“Some people went back to the Center. But I was hanging around to see whether you might return. A lot of our group stayed on the boat until after breakfast. The dawn was lovely. Matte came to me. He realized I was from the Center. I don’t look like the other people he knows, with their perfect bodies. He took me to his room. He wanted information about you.”

“What did you say?”