Instead he saw its nation states and its cities reduced to counters. Budapest, Buenos Aires, Amman, Lima – not real places inhabited by real people, but each a residence and a large staff who formed a barrier to knowing about the city, or the country beyond it, or the people. They were counters in a game to further a career.

Five years became thirty-five. He rested on his oars. He crossed his fingers behind his back, hoping no one suspected the truth about him, merely playing the role expected of an officer in the Administrative Stream, the part of a responsible, patriotic, intelligent, efficient and above all virtuous career diplomat. And no one did suspect. They might see he lacked the hunger for high office – and the day must have arrived when it was decided he would never be given Paris or Moscow after all – but they thought incredibly well of him, at any rate well enough for Lisbon, which was the only post he coveted anyway.

At fifty-eight, Wavery had a fine haggard look. He was not a handsome man feature for feature, but he exerted a definite presence. He had the aura of a wise man and people deferred to him. If a conversation bored or irritated him he did not let it show. When he looked at you his gaze was always active and direct. That was his gift, a talent for appearing interested. Of himself, he never revealed anything. You never enquired what it was that shamed or hurt or excited Thomas Wavery because whatever it was he had a knack of burying away. He was content to be the kind of quiet Englishman who had attributed to him all sorts of resources and strengths he did not possess. Women found him attractive because he exuded an air of safety, but it did not cross his mind to be unfaithful, as much out of support for Penny as from an incomplete sense of himself. Diplomatic life had been a continuous party at which he could not be himself. After years and years of not being himself he was beginning to believe there was no self to be.

And in that limbo, love had also died.

Encouraged to put down roots, and then to tear them up every three years, Wavery became wary of going too deep. He remembered the hurt it had caused him when he broke off friendships in those early years, in Portugal, Cambodia, Jordan. He learned to protect himself and never to become too intimate. He learned the skill of evading anything which might disturb him.

Without knowing it, he found himself behaving in the same manner towards his wife. They had been married ten years when Penny said, “Whatever happened to your hands?”

“My hands?”

She had been sitting back, contemplating him. “I’ve just been thinking, you never wave your hands anymore.”

“Don’t I?”

“You’re tired, darling, aren’t you?”

She came forward and embraced him. “Tom, I’m sorry,” she said, her closed eyes adding, “Sorry for not giving you children. Sorry that I have found a life instead.”