He held Rita by the waist.

“And I get to take the prettiest one home,” said Mr Riding who was slightly drunk.

He detached himself from Rita. Catharine let him arrange his arm like a stole about her shoulder. “Rita, we must go,” she said over his limp arm.

“Say goodbye to Denver and I’ll see you by the door,” said Rita. “I haven’t spoken to Tom.”

They watched Catharine take her husband away. The woman who a moment before had been so vulnerable in the patio was supporting him. Her support was more than that of a wife helping her drunken husband across the floor.

“I love Catharine,” said Rita. She scratched her long neck. “I’ve only known her for three years. But I love her.”

Wavery was silent. She had never said goodbye.

“It’s never what you think,” Rita continued. “Adam’s a highly successful, immensely attractive businessman – and a great flirt. But in private he depends on her I would say one hundred per cent.”

“They were both charming, I thought,” said Wavery. He was moved to follow inside, but Rita had not finished.

“I don’t know why, but it’s a fantastic shame.”

“What is?” asked Wavery.

“Her sustaining his myth to the world. That’s been her role from the beginning. He couldn’t be the man he is without her, yet the man he is leaves her with nothing.”

At eight forty-five on the morning after Rita Tennyson’s party, Wavery arrived at the Embassy in Plaza Washington and walked out on the eleventh floor instead of the twelfth. The lift doors had closed by the time he realised his mistake. He prodded the button and waited. The lift returned to the lobby. He watched the green light making its halting ascent to the eleventh floor, every stop marked by a pinging bell. The doors shuddered open and he entered. Apart from Catharine Riding the lift was empty.

The doors closed and Wavery gazed at the overhead strip waiting for the button to flash twelve. There was a brass plate on the ceiling. SCHINDLER. 900 KGS. MAX 12 PERS., he read. The bell pinged.

He said, “I know it’s a mad idea. But do you have time to see an exceptional garden?”

Afterwards, at lunch, he would say, “Always these things occur to you later, but this time it occurred to me on the spot.”

They arranged to meet the following day. At midday she waited for him in the Miramar lobby. Her hair was tied at the back with a black velvet band and she wore a dark-green dress. They shook hands and he apologised. He was five minutes late, and out of breath.

The garden was twenty minutes away in the Barranco district. Wavery had come across it first with Penny. She bought painted trays from a young widow in the same street. She had been telling him about the husband, killed in a police ambush near Chimbote, when he noticed the wrought-iron railings.

“Well? There you are. What do you think?” he asked Catharine. “See what you can do in a simply ghastly climate.”