Once, he seemed so bereft that I asked him to join me on the sofa while I watched a film on the television. Attentive as always, he made me a cup of tea and asked if he could do anything to help around the flat. Scrub the floors or run errands. Anything to make us happy. It did seem a little strange, this yearning to belong to our family, until he confessed this odd belief… that he and Vida were fated to meet, and that a power not of this earth had sent him to us. When I inquired how he knew this, he said it was a question of their names. Both Vida’s and this boy’s name meant, in their respective languages, the ‘happy king’.

So strange, the memories your visit has unleashed! Almost as if the spool of time was rewound, and by merely closing my eyes, I can roam freely through the days and hours of forty years ago.

If you are ever in Paris and would like to meet again, do remember to call on me.

Sincerely yours,

Mme Katerina Sovàny Chabon

Gessen folded the letter and swivelled his chair to face the mountains. Avalanche warnings had been sent out earlier in the week, and some of the roads through the valley were closed as a precaution.

The happy king. Vidor Kiraly. Malik Sayid. Easy enough to confirm after a quick search online of the Hungarian and Arabic translations. Two boys, mirror versions of each other. It must have seemed to someone in Malik’s fragile state a happy omen to have joined the household of someone whose name echoed his. A sign that it was possible to move forward in life, with the prospect of a bright future. To lay down the burden of the past and accept the mantel he’d been born with. The happy king. An admonition – or a benediction, depending on how he viewed his fate. And after the real Vidor disappeared, it might have seemed natural for a young man suffering from childhood trauma, and a disturbed sense of self, to step into the empty space left by the other boy’s absence.

Perhaps Malik felt, in a convoluted way, that it was his duty to ensure that Vidor lived on, even if in a different form. To carry Vidor’s legacy to the lofty heights he might have reached had he not disappeared into the roiling waters of the Seine.