Although he wore no tie, he was carefully dressed. Waking that morning before the alarm and disarming it, he had spent a while choosing which shirt he would wear, which jacket, which trousers. The green tweed jacket was new, fitted for him by a Fulham tailor in under two weeks. “You can wear the bottom button undone,” the man had said. “In fact I advise you to do so.”

He rose from the desk, feeling in his pockets for the keys of the Daimler. It was three thirty-five and she was arriving at four.

“Ah, ambasadoro. Is this a good moment?”

“To be honest, Silkleigh, no, it is not.”

“I won’t keep you long. I just need eine kleine cheque off you,” said Silkleigh. “I’ve got to go to Gib to collect one or two artefacts and I thought I would pay your hungry workers. Then Cochabamba and I plan to za-za up the coast for a couple of days. I’ve reached a rather excitable stage with the girl.”

He handed Wavery his invoice. It was the sum agreed on the terrace four months before. Wavery wrote out a cheque.

“Are you sure that covers everything?”

“Absolutely, old soul,” said Silkleigh, opening his notebook. He folded the cheque between the pages.

Despite what he had learned last night from Marie Amaral, Wavery said, “I’m very grateful.” Until Silkleigh had come to his rescue the man had been steadily driving him insane. But his workmen had been first-rate and there had not been a single harassment from London since their arrival.

“You know Silkleigh,” said Silkleigh. “Anything for Queen and country.”

Wavery was seasoned to the diver’s banter. “How’s the book?” he asked. He could afford to be generous for a few minutes more. Silkleigh had frequently swum into Wavery’s thoughts as he sat writing on the terrace. He had wished to avoid Silkleigh’s example, casting out stories he would never use, stories like fish, throwing fish that were too little back into the water, swimming away from the page which might describe his life, forever in search of one more shiny, slippery, rainbow-finned excuse. The whole point of Catharine’s letter, Wavery understood on his terrace, was that it gave him no excuse.

“I’ve begun,” said Silkleigh.

“The same title?” asked Wavery.

“Covers so many things, On the Rocks,” said Silkleigh. Love. Ships. The Pillars of Hercules. He was calling Chapter Two “A Croupier in Haiti”.

“Well, I think that’s all,” said Wavery, now anxious to leave. “Isn’t it?”

But Silkleigh stood there. “I saw you walking Marie Amaral home last night, ambasadoro. Is that going well, then?”

In his life before Catharine, Wavery might have ignored such a question. Fired by her imminent arrival, he sat back. He said, “Tell me something, Silkleigh. You claim to be the possessor of archives in this place. You claim to know everything. Tell me about Marie Amaral. You’ve told me about everyone else in Abyla, but not about her. You’ve never talked about her, or her son. What about them?”