David hunched over the chessboard, watching me through the pieces. He was waiting for me to catch up with my real self. He regarded my visits to Summerfield as an educative process; gradually I would accept my responsibility for the events that had brought him to this grim institution. At the end of my visits, when he accompanied me to the staircase, he clearly expected me to decide to stay. I would move into a spare bed in Hyacinth ward and our games of chess would continue until all the pieces had been stolen from the board.

“Have you seen Sally yet?” he asked offhandedly. “I think she’d like to hear from you.”

“We talked on the telephone—she’s staying in Scotland with some rich woman friend of her father’s, while they try out this new methadone treatment. She sounded a lot calmer.”

“She ought to go back to the States. I can see her strolling around Haight-Ashbury…” His hand was trembling over the board, as he fixed his eyes on some wayward dream of the past. When I reached out to reassure him, touching his wrist, he pulled away from me and I saw that he had replaced the black king.

“David, all that’s over now—the GIs are back from Vietnam, and Nixon’s gone to China.”

“I know. Thank God I’m here, everything’s so earnest. You’ll miss Vietnam.”

“Will I? Why?”

“All those newsreels every night? I used to wonder why you never came back to Shanghai with me. You didn’t need to—they started the Vietnam War for you instead.”

“I wasn’t ready to go back.” I watched the old accountant hovering over his solitary pawn. “It would have been too much like returning to the scene of a crime.”

“I know what you mean, Jim. I looked for that little railway station of yours.”

“On the Hangchow–Shanghai line?” I tried not to sound sceptical. “I’m surprised you never told me.”

“Well … Miriam had died. You had enough things on your mind. Anyway, the damned taxi driver couldn’t find it. Those tourist guides are doing their best to turn Shanghai into a riddle.”

“It’s probably gone, I shouldn’t worry. Let’s play some chess—black or white?”

“No, it’s there.” David ignored my raised hands, his eyes fixed on mine. “It’s marked on the Greater Shanghai Transit Company map. And inside your head.”

“Not anymore.”

“No? Your crashed-cars exhibition—no one realised it, but that’s what you were staging there.”

“At a few removes.”

“At no removes. Jim, I understand…”