“What are you thinking?” asked Wavery over coffee.

“I was thinking about the rock plant,” she pretended. “We could have planted it in that marvellous garden.”

“How silly,” he said. “We should have bought one.”

She dipped a finger into her wineglass and retrieved a breadcrumb from the bottom. “What are you thinking?”

“Where do you think they make these labels?”

“I don’t care.”

“I was thinking about your husband.”

She said, “Oh, he’s fine,” as though he had been involved in some accident and was recovering well. She adjusted herself. “He’s a very clever man. He’s done terribly well with his wine business. People aren’t buying a lot in the recession.” Wavery could see the effort she was making to describe the man as the world saw him. “He’s pulled off the most brilliant coup with Tacama. He’s fine . . . ” She stopped, acknowledging that what she had said was boring. Her words hung between them both, heated by the candle in the distorting air.

“We ought to go,” said Wavery. He raised his hand for the bill. “Where is he?” He looked at her watch and she twisted her wrist for him.

“Two-thirty,” she said.

The couple rose from the next table, leaving without a glance. Through the window Wavery saw the man open the passenger door for the girl. The car was parked beside a pillbox. Through the slit in the pillbox could be seen the perforated muzzle of a machine gun

“A gun for a restaurant?” she said.

“Last month the terrorists lobbed a stick of dynamite in here. A month before they forced everyone to the floor and removed their wallets.”

“So you suggested it.”

“It’s the same everywhere.”

“Will you be happy to leave?”

“Oh, I think so.”

“Do you know where next?”

“Portugal. At least that’s what I’m hoping.”

“I’ve never been there.”

“For God’s sake, you’ve never been to Lisbon! You have to go. You’ll have to come and stay.”

But he was thinking how stupid he felt and what was he to do, how was he to stop this gibberish toadhopping from his mouth, how could he crash his fist through the glass and grab the appropriate words, how could he after a lifetime of never ever saying what he felt, say now what he felt?

After he had been thoroughly beckoned at the waiter arrived.

“We’re in rather a hurry.”

“Si, señor.”

She laughed and a boundary line moved. “My sister always irritates me by saying the cemetery is full of hurried men.”

The waiter produced the bill on a plate accompanied by two fortune cookies. Wavery’s biscuit was stale. The little paper said: “The fun is just beginning. Take it easy.” It burned quickly, floating a man’s height in the air, then collapsing in a web of ash. Wavery rose to catch it. He sat down and she was talking. There was a dullness to her voice. He folded his napkin. She was talking about the trip she and Adam were about to make to Arequipa. Was Arequipa lovely, as Queesal said?