Halima cleared away the plates. “I don’t suppose you have such a thing as a melon,” said Queesal.

For the remainder of the meal the two men talked vaguely about the past. Talk of the office, of Lima.

“HE went rather to pieces after his geese flew away,” said Queesal. “You’d catch him pulling at his beard and staring at the wall. When you asked what the matter was he’d explain he’d heard voices in the garden threatening to dispose of him in a variety of horrible ways.”

“And Deirdre . . . ?”

“You know,” Queesal went on, “when I came to leave Lima instead of feeling glad to leave that effing place, I felt sorry.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Despite my promotion.” Queesal surveyed Wavery down the length of the table and gave his host a sad smile. The wine, bitter though it was, had fortified his belief that Wavery was one of those who hadn’t come up to scratch. Earmarked once for Paris, then Lisbon, here he was ending his days in Abyla. Disgrace had made his colleague powerless. It revealed Wavery for what Queesal had always known him to be: a chinless wonder from Oxbridge passing through the Foreign Office on his way from womb to tomb.

“Cullis sends his regards,” he said.

“Oh, yes. How is Cullis?”

“He says to remind you the Queen doesn’t like garnish and her husband won’t sleep with a duvet.”

“Right.”

“He’s chirpy at the moment. He’s won a cruise for two in a limerick competition.”

“Cullis? Writing limericks?”

But Queesal’s attention was on the wall. “Nice painting. Who is it?”

“As a matter of fact, it’s a landscape.”

“One of Penny’s?”

“That’s right,” said Wavery. He was surprised at Queesal’s failure to recognise the artist for whom, to employ his own words, he had always a soft spot.

“How is Penny?”

“Fine. I think.” Wavery had called on Christmas Day after the Queen’s Speech. He was intending to tell her the story of his passport. She had picked up the telephone, laughing.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m trying to put up a cabinet in the kitchen.” But her laugh had nothing to do with a cabinet. In it Wavery heard what he had never given her.

“Sorry to hear about that,” said Queesal.

Wavery felt a powerful urge to say something new, but he said, “Probably for the best.”

“Was it, as it were, that young woman we met at Rita’s?”

Wavery nodded. Had Queesal expected to find her ensconced?

“I was getting on rather well with her,” Queesal remembered. “Clarissa something.”

“Catharine.” Just when things were becoming really dire. Just when he needed a signal, she had written to say she was coming. It didn’t matter that July was six months away.

“I always had a soft spot for Penny.”

“She liked you too.” Both of them wanted desperately to matter to people. “How’s Shirley?”

“Fine, fine. She’s now living in Miami.”

“With Salvador?”