“I’m seeing where we join.” He rang with a clear sound. “The indians exterminated by the Argentines had eight different ways of saying ‘I love you’.”

She ran her hand back and forth over his stomach. “It never occurred to me. Not this.”

“What didn’t?”

“That you’d find me attractive.”

He waved at the brown blanket, the sheet.

She rescued him. “Have I done this before?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“No, Tom.”

“Then why with me?” She was young enough to be his daughter.

“It was unthinkable before.”

He stroked the back of her hands, her arms. When he touched her shoulder, she flinched. She tried to sit up, but his body hemmed her in. She threw herself back against the bed-head, her face turning from side to side. “Wait,” she said. “Listen. Listen –” Pain clawed at her face. He gripped her hand, to give her his protection. He listened to what she was saying, but realised she was trying to protect him.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” she moaned. “I’m not safe for you.”

“Oh yes, you are,” he managed through kisses.

“I’m not safe, Tom,” she warned him.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

She pushed at him, but he held her. “Catharine, what’s wrong?” Don’t worry, he was saying. He understood her panic. She had not been unfaithful before. He might be expecting too much. Her innocence matched his own.

“I’m not reliable,” she said, willing herself to be understood like this. “But I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that.” She reached for him in the half-light, squeezing his arm, but what she thought was his arm was an empty fold of the blanket. “Oh, God, I don’t know what I mean.”

It was their last day and she tried to be happy, but her mood infected the day. In the morning they visited the Gulbenkian Collection. After lunch they saw the Moorish castle, and then returned to the hotel.

“Look!” said Catharine as they came into their square. She had seen the lopsided, ill-lit window and the row of masks.

There were more masks inside, but new ones. A man was painting them from a pile on the counter. He was listening to a football match on the radio. Behind the counter he nodded support for one of the teams, dipping his brush into a bowl. The room smelled of glue and turpentine.

Catharine looked at the eyeless carnival faces: black and white, silver and gold, mauve and vermilion.

“You should buy one for your husband,” said Wavery. He deluded himself he meant it kindly, but he was giving in to anguish. He was proving his dominion and striking back at pain.

“I don’t think so, Tom.”

“Then one for you,” said Wavery. “What about an unpainted one?”

“That one,” she said.

“This is a present from me,” he said. He took the face from the bottom of the pile.

The man watched them. His narrow eyes minnowed from one to the other. He wiped his hands on his apron and wrapped the mask in crinkled brown paper, biting the corner of his mouth and taking forever.