As it happened, my small role had been edited out of the finished film, much to my relief, though I survived as a brief blur seen as the camera followed my younger self playing with his model aircraft. But this seemed just, like the faint blur which was all that any of us left across time and space. Besides, the film had served a deeper role for me—seeing its masterly recreation of Shanghai had been the last act in a profound catharsis that had taken decades to draw to a close. All the powers of modern film had come together for this therapeutic exercise. The puzzle had solved itself; the mirror, as I had promised, had been broken from within. In my mind the image had fused with its original, enfolding it within its protective wings. Looking at the great hotels along the Bund, unchanged after fifty years, I could almost believe that my memories of Shanghai had always been a film, endlessly played inside my head during my years in England after the war.

*   *   *

“They’re launching some kind of ship.”

Cleo pointed to the crowd of people at the water’s edge. A caterpillar tractor backed across the sand, pushing a trailer loaded with a bizarre sailing vessel. A single mast rose above a cabin that resembled a thatched hut. As we approached across the sand we could see that the hull was built entirely of papyrus reeds, bound together at stem and stern like the handle of a wicker shopping bag.

A square-rigged sail floated from the mast, bearing a half-familiar red emblem.

Cleo stopped and squinted through cupped hands. “It’s Heyerdahl’s papyrus ship—Ra. We published the book.”

“I thought it sank in the Atlantic…”

“He must be trying to cross the Pacific. Jim, you ought to volunteer. It’s the original slow boat to China.”

“I don’t think it’s an original of anything…”

Crewmen knelt in the shallow waves, examining the underside of the craft. We stepped through the children and dogs playing in the water around the tractor. The mock-papyrus superstructure, assembled from moulded plastic and fibreglass, was bolted onto a sturdy steel hull.

“It’s the replica of a replica.” Cleo laughed at herself for being taken in. “They must be using it in a film.”

“It looks like a real ship, though. If they’re making a TV commercial they’ll need something more seaworthy than Heyerdahl’s original. This one’s going somewhere.”

“Jim, now’s your chance to get aboard.”