Before, when she told these things to Señor Wavery, he would make jokes about saucepans. But that was then. Since Africa, he had passed beyond the saucepan stage. There was in his face an indelible pain. It was a look she recognised well. It reminded Asunción of Clotilda’s face when Almestor, her first serious boyfriend, had left for Fez with Mariano, the photographer-monk. It was her own dishevelled face on the night when she lay in bed with Tromso, his ears cold on her chest, and found herself saying simply: “It’s over, isn’t it?” Most of all it was her father’s face in the weeks after her mother died. When she came to her beastly death her mother’s concern was for Teodoro, that he would cope, and he had not.

But when she asked the Consul General if there was anything the matter, Wavery had said, “Asunción, I can’t talk about it, not now.”

The truth was he had become a stranger to himself. He was lost and in this state he had grabbed at the one characteristic of his former self he remembered with confidence. What had happened between himself and Catharine in Africa he didn’t want to believe, and therefore it wasn’t true.

“Where were we?” he asked. When Queesal telephoned, they had been checking the guest list for the reception to be held at the residence.

Wavery looked down the list. The supreme head of the Nigerian Military Council had replied. So had the chairman of the telephone exchange and Señor Lavandier, manager of the antimony works.

“We’ve had three enquiries from British residents in Tangier,” said Asunción. “They want to know why they haven’t been invited.” London had been unrelenting about numbers.

“And there’s Volta,” said Wavery, recalling the Italian Consul General.

Asunción added his name. “Another call from Genia Ortiz . . . ”

Wavery said, “Let her come.”

She said, “That makes two hundred exactly.”

“No one vital we’ve left out?”

She thought not.

“I’ll take it home. Meanwhile we’d better answer these,” said Wavery. He reread the top letter on the mound. “To the Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund,” he said and he dictated his assurance that the military authorities had been left in no doubt of HRH’s express wish to dispense with a motorcycle escort, or anything that might risk disturbing the ibis, especially now that a chick had hatched.

“To your father,” he said and he dictated a regret that Her Majesty would be unable to accept the President’s invitation to the bullfight, but would instead be represented by her Consul General.

“To the Chief of Protocol,” he said. To the last he conveyed his pleasure to learn that in honour of the forthcoming Royal Visit and at some stage during her stay in Abyla, most likely in the privacy of his residence, Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to appoint Thomas Wavery a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.

Sir Thomas Wavery. He tried out the words on himself, but took no pleasure at the thought.