His attention was caught only when he came across the obituaries of two of his acquaintances. It seemed a dangerously high body count. Both had died prematurely. One had once been his publisher.

He had died, though it did not say so, of the drink. The other had been a fellow-scholar at Oxford. Cancer had killed him. Stephen paid a silent tribute to Michael Rowbotham and Stuart Cross, and registered the fact that Death was already his companion. Death had joined the caravan early, even though Stephen’s visa would take him only as far as Bangkok.

An announcement in French followed by English declared that the plane would take off in twenty minutes, and that the name of the captain was Commandant Parodi. Stephen was pleased by this. Who better to fly one into the unknown? We live in the age of parody, reflected Stephen. He had known another Parodi, years ago, in Normandy. He had been the manager of the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, the hotel of Balbec, which Proust had made his own. Stephen had arrived there on his bicycle, and the manager had been at first suspicious of his credentials, then appeased. Monsieur Parodi. Was it a common name, were these two related? Stephen did not know. The curving wide beach of Cabourg returned to him, the blue-grey watercolour sky, the yellow sands, the girls forever on their bicycles. He had walked from his hotel room across a marble foyer into the sea, wearing a white bathrobe. And in the evenings, he had played roulette in the casino, and eaten from little oval platters of fruits de mer, silver platters heaped with oysters and winkles and urchins and prawns and razor shells and mussels and green weeds of the sea. Good Time, he had then inhabited. He had been young enough to lay his chips for luck upon the number of his own age. Now he had long since left the board, and played roulette no more.

But luck was still with him, and the seat next to him was still empty. He appropriated it with his books, his briefcase, his plastic-bagged purchase of a small duty-free radio. He thought himself free from company, for Captain Parodi was already beginning to taxi towards the runway, but no, here at the last moment was a fellowtraveller, invading and claiming his space. He scooped up his belongings and redeployed them beneath his feet. As he did so, he took note that Death had been joined near the Emergency Exit by Lust.