Catharine blushed. “Could we change it to mine? In case he rings.” The manager scored out Wavery’s name. Dutifully, he entered the names written in Catharine’s passport. “It’s the Riding that matters,” she said, and to Wavery, simply, “I’m sorry.” He ordered drinks on the terrace. It overlooked the town occupied by Lieutenant Zamora in 1921, but Wavery did not see the stone bridge or the women washing clothes or the mule raising a dripping nose from the river. For nine months he had experienced the pain of not being able to share a view with Catharine. Now there was a whole continent to explore, he could look only at her.

At eight she took the room key. “I’ll just make that call.” Twenty minutes later she came back and kissed the top of Wavery’s head. Her breath was warm on his neck.

She said, “And your other reality. How is she?”

“We’re more or less divorced,” he said.

She drew up a chair. “Oh, Tom, no,” she whispered. “But that’s dreadful.” She looked away. Darkness was cooling the valley. On the riverbank a woman loaded the mule with wet clothes. From the water came a sound of frogs. The dusk smelt of cumin.

“It would have happened anyway.”

She looked back, bowing her body over folded arms. “I didn’t realise. I presumed she was in London, or –” She was shaken.

He touched her arm. He said, “Did you ever get my message?”

“What message?”

“Never mind, it’s not important.” Her husband must have failed to pass it on.

“What message, darling?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just that once I called you.”

“But when?”

“When I heard about my appointment.”

“No one told me this!”

“It was a moment of weakness.”

She stared back at him. “So it wasn’t me who broke our promise?”

“No. It wasn’t you.”

She went on, speaking quickly, “I read it in the paper. Adam kept it for me. I couldn’t understand. I thought, what’s happened? Why isn’t he going to Lisbon – like he told me? Where is this place – Abyla? And I looked on the map and I felt . . . I felt it was such a terrible shame.”

“Please,” said Wavery. “Don’t be silly.”

“It’s stupid,” she said in the same rapid voice. “I don’t know why, but I felt guilty and no matter how often I told myself, no, it could be nothing to do with me, I was not to blame, this feeling grew and grew. Then one day it became too much. I couldn’t bear to feel it a moment longer. I was hugging my daughters and it was you I was touching, and – and that’s when I wrote.”

“Catharine, I’m glad you did,” said Wavery.

They ate an early dinner. Afterwards they went upstairs. He undressed. She came up behind him. He felt her breasts against his back, then lower down her hair.

“Lie on top of me,” she said. “I want to feel your weight.”