But this is all in the future, unrevealed. Now, it rains. Yes, they will meet soon, they promise one another, as they stand in the stained-glass Edwardian portico, as Brian puts up his umbrella.

Liz waves them off, and returns to her emptied house. It had been, she considers, a triumph, of its kind. She wanders from room to room, surveying the damage. How soon will there be news of Hattie’s baby? Who spilt that wine on the hall carpet? Where has her cat taken refuge?

Miss Porntip’s alien blooms are still trapped in their box. As she releases them, she thinks suddenly of Rose and Konstantin Vassiliou. Why had they defected? Why had they failed her feast?

There is no way that Konstantin and Rose Vassiliou could have attended the reception in Dresden Road. They belong to a different world and a different density. They have wandered into this story from the old-fashioned, Freudian, psychological novel, and they cannot mix and mingle with the guests of Liz Headleand. They should never have been invited.

There is not time for them here.

Konstantin and Rose sit in the café in Seven Dials, drinking cup after cup of coffee.

Is it Rose’s fault that Konstantin is a sweet bird of death, a mourning dove, a destroyer, driven by childhood responsibilities to haunt battlefields and widows and orphans and starving children?

Is it Rose’s fault that Stephen, whom she has never met, lies dead in an unmarked grave? Is it Rose’s fault that Konstantin has been through the slough of despond and dwelt in the valley of the shadow? This is the language she gave him, these the images, and this the pain.

Is it Konstantin’s fault that Rose Vassiliou looks old and worn, that her face is etched with little lines of sorrow, that her hair has turned grey? Is it Konstantin’s fault that her nails are bitten to the quick like the nails of a schoolgirl?

We must leave them there, mother and son, to their own explanations, to their own reconciliations. We cannot overhear their conversation.

Nor can we see Mitra Akrun, as he strides through the forest, girded not with a camera but with a cartridge belt. Mitra Akrun has been much invoked, by his mother, by Konstantin Vassiliou, by Stephen Cox, by Liz Headleand, by the Bangkok Post, by the charitable agency that used his mother’s image to raise funds for its own purposes. But he will not respond to the summons. He will not present himself at Site Ten, he will not reach the family embrace. He will not step back through the gates of horn. He will march on, armed, blooded, bloodied, a rusty Chinese rifle at his back. Many have died and many more will die in their attempt to maim and capture him. He grows and grows, he multiplies. Terribly, he smiles. He is legion. He has not been told that he is living at the end of history. He does not care whether his mother lives or dies. He marches on. He is multitudes.