I poured the tea and watched him rotate his cup to set the leaves spinning. ‘The Furneaux group?’

‘You know the geography, then.’ He was silent a moment, picking at a fingernail.

‘What do you want my father to do about this?’

‘He must go and find it. In his interest, as much as mine.’

‘He cannot,’ I said abruptly.

I’d startled him. He gathered his thoughts with evident care. ‘Is your father, then, also…deceased?’

‘No, he is…alive. He is no longer in the service of the King, so I do not see how he can be of assistance to you.’

The dark eyes indicated a change of tack. ‘It is not the King’s concern. Would you take me to him, perhaps? I should discuss this with him directly.’

‘No. I will not do that, I am sorry.’

The visitor sighed. ‘These are difficult matters, young lady. Difficult things to—’

‘Very difficult, no doubt. But you see I’m not so very young. And I am busy.’ I waved a hand at a pile of balled wool on a side table. The fowl had taken to nesting in it. ‘I have domestic standards to maintain. So let us not waste each other’s time.’

He smiled reluctantly, the first time I had seen the smile. It was gentle. ‘You have your mother’s spirit, if I may say so. A sad and lovely thing to behold.’

‘And a long walk for the beholding.’ The man made no attempt to get up from the chair he occupied. He had sipped barely half an inch from the tea.

‘You cannot come here and make these demands—’ I stopped myself.

I thought about it, too briefly I now realise, and was swayed by the affinity I felt for the man. A form of relenting, I suppose; one I should not have indulged.

‘Oh, go on then—tell me why you must involve my father, or take your leave.’

~

He told me he remembered my father as a good man, though he was angry with him for a time. My father had promised him his freedom in return for testimony against Figge and Clark, then changed his mind and had Srinivas placed under guard. Seated in my kitchen after all these years, Srinivas said he could see that my father had been trying to protect him from the malevolent Mr Figge. The Bengali spoke that name with the faintest of shudders.

I tried to busy myself about the room, tried to make distractions. This story I’d heard in pieces, in moods, the leaden frame around my childhood, and much heartache besides. Governor Hunter was long gone, recalled to London, his name now just an inscription on a limestone slab; my mother was also in the ground. This story had belonged to me and my father, no one else. And this stranger had lived it.