Her answer arrived at dinner one week later. Ernesto, pretending to go duck shooting with Teodoro Zamora, had come home with a brace of mallard from Don Ramon’s grocery. In the afternoon, when he should have been in Africa, Genia Ortiz had followed him to the asylum. “I think you’re a great fool,” she said.

Ernesto opened his mouth and closed it.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“You can ask me anything,” he said, his smile made all the more piquant by his slight buck teeth. “Anything!” When he felt seriously cornered he imitated her.

“Have you ever been unfaithful to me?”

She asked her question as he put a fork into his mouth. She had to wait for him to chew and swallow before hearing his answer.

“Never,” said Ernesto growing red and looking round. She passed him the note. “On behalf of one who seeks some justice in this matter,” he whinnied. He placed the piece of paper under his teacup. “Malicious, wouldn’t you say? Malicious!”

“A cook,” said Genia Ortiz. An irritating blond woman with dimpled legs. He had seen what a great thing a lovely figure was. She could almost bring herself to acknowledge he might wish to go off with someone more beautiful. But some bit of tat with dimpled legs! It was an insult too profound.

“Genia, you can’t –” The author of this note was a sybil of misinformation. The girl was an aspirant violin player. She meant nothing to him. Nothing! Once, yes, once, now he came to think of it, he had been pounced upon by a nymphomaniac in a hotel in Avignon. But what pride Genia would have taken in his resistance. “Oh, you’re so silly,” he said. “But that’s why I love you. Because of your silliness.”

At the other end of the table, the colour had departed his wife’s face. She saw the last two decades unravel. She felt very dull. Was that the fate that stretched before her, endlessly to catch him out? She looked at the man she had met in Norway’s Murky Time. After a long absence a cold light had returned to the landscape. It illuminated her husband for what he really was. He was a man who avoided the truth as he avoided the sun: his constitution was too delicate for it. He preferred the shadows, the inconsequences of Café Ulises.

She said, “What do we do?”

He rose, advanced to her chair and seized both her hands. He kissed the mole on her neck and pulled his wife to her feet. “Come on, darling,” Ernesto whispered, leading her to their bedroom.

For a month she ignored the note. She chose to believe Ernesto. At this point her relationship mattered more than the truth. She did not want to believe she had exchanged her dreams and ideals for an everyday situation. Then one afternoon Genia Ortiz understood why it was that on certain days – invariably those days she worked at El Faro – she found their wedding photograph folded away in the bedroom. She returned home early to find another in its place, and Ernesto’s face at the door crumpled by an expression of terror.