Vidor turned to look at the vase of blood-red flowers. ‘It’s not such a strange phenomenon, when you think of it. The suppression or even complete eradication of one’s identity. It happens to everyone, doesn’t it? When a boy becomes a man, the child he once was ceases to exist. The man in his fifties does not view the world through the eyes of a five-year-old. That child is gone, resting for decades, undisturbed in his grave. If not for your relentless probing and prying, the boy I once was, long dead, though at one time full of life and wondrous dreams, would have been content to remain in the dark for all eternity.’

‘That’s all very poetic, but…’ Gessen gave him a puzzled look.

Had he not yet figured it out? Vidor inwardly scoffed. Not quite the genius he made himself out to be. He leaned back into the soft leather and closed his eyes. ‘A long time ago, I began life as an illiterate boy from a poor village in a war-torn country. That boy, abandoned at birth and left to die, came from nothing and expected nothing from life, not even to survive. Until a kind foreign woman discovered he had a sharp mind and a knack for learning and got him enrolled at a local school. The boy worked hard at his lessons and excelled in his exams, all the while dreaming that he would escape one day to the gleaming city he’d read about in books. After many years of toil, not to mention struggling with the kind of loneliness and shame only an outcast endures, the boy grew up to become a world-class neuroscientist and Cambridge don, known to the world, of course, by a different name.’

He paused to allow Gessen a chance to speak, but for once the man had nothing to say. Vidor kept his eyes shut and tried to recall the sounds and smells of the souk in that long-ago village, the feel of warm stones on his feet, the scorching sands. Under the heat of the blistering sun, Vidor faded away and Malik raised his face to the light. ‘Permettez-moi de vous présenter ce garçon mort depuis longtemps. Allow me to introduce you to that long-dead boy.’ Malik extended his hand and spoke the name given to him at birth, ‘Malik Sayid. I believe the two of you might have met once or twice in your treatment room. But here he is properly, in the flesh, so to speak, though his essence grows fainter with the years and he could, at any minute, be forced into hiding again.’

The startled look on Gessen’s face gave him no small measure of satisfaction.