But Cleo was nervous of me, aware that I was doggedly following a dangerous logic of my own. If death had outstared life, which the world seemed to believe, I could rest my case. In a desperate sense Miriam would be alive again, Kennedy would drive triumphantly through Dealey Plaza, the casualties of the Second World War would rest in their graves, and a Chinese youth at a rural railway station would at last have conveyed his desperate message to me.

*   *   *

The exhibition ran its four-week course. During this time the cars were continually abused by outraged visitors. A Hare Krishna sect stormed into the gallery and threw a tin of white paint at the Lincoln. Meanwhile, Sally and David continued their courtship, hunting each other across the city in the same way that David and I had once played hide-and-seek in the streets of Shanghai, a game too important to be brought to an end.

On the evening that the exhibition closed I was driving back to Shepperton along the Hammersmith flyover, when I saw Sally’s MG speeding down the exit ramp in front of me. I had spent the afternoon at the gallery, supervising the removal of my battered exhibits, whose distressed condition—they were covered with paint and graffiti, their seats soaked in urine—shocked the hardened car-breakers when they arrived with their tow truck. At first they refused to accept the vehicles, their eyes opened to the barbarities of modern art. The cars might be destined for the compactor and the blast furnace, but as they dragged them into the street they were already cleaning them protectively.

While I drove along the flyover I wiped the last of the white paint from my hands and watched Sally’s sports car speeding through the traffic, a defective taillight winking at the dusk. In the past, whenever I saw her on the roads to the west of London, I was sure that she was on her way to Shepperton. Now I guessed that she was off to see David at Fair Oaks airfield, and for a moment I felt a small part of that loss I had known after Miriam’s death. Sally at least would smile at me again; we would make love and remain as fond of each other as ever. But the last things she wanted were sympathy and affection. She needed David’s unresolved aggressions and his outbursts of erratic humour when he would slap her face for her if she played the difficult child.