If Jomier does not believe, why not renege on the contract? Even if he did believe, could he not argue that God has failed to keep to his side of the bargain? He was to cure Jomier’s daughter, not Marco’s. Why not go on hating and wallow in rancour? Because, even though he now knows that Louisa is not his daughter, Jomier does not want her to die. Reason may tell him that her cure is not the result of his prayer; that the diagnosis of Frycht’s anaemia cannot have had anything whatsoever to do with the intervention of a First Cause from outside the space–time continuum. But Jomier has become superstitious. What if, as Pascal postulated, there are truths inaccessible to reason known only to the heart? Jomier does not yet believe or forgive or repent but he loves. He loves his son, his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren. He loves the daughter who is not his daughter. She is back in Argentina: Skype and emailed photos have shown that she has regained her colour and put on weight. He will go there for Christmas. Professor Adams and Professor Cochella are at one in saying that her cure is 99 per cent assured. But a relapse is not altogether impossible. There remains that 1 per cent. Jomier dares not take the risk of double-crossing God.

It is growing dark. Jomier has three hours before leaving to meet Judith at the Café Anglais. He goes down to his kitchen, makes a mug of tea, carries it through to his living room, and sits down on the sofa to watch Farewell, My Lovely which he recorded the night before.

About the Author

Piers Paul Read was born in Buckinghamshire and studied History at Cambridge University. His books include the novel Monk Dawson, for which he won a Hawthornden Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award, and A Married Man which was dramatised for television in 1984 with Anthony Hopkins in the title role. A work of non-fiction, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, documented the story of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and was adapted into the 1993 film Alive. In 1988 he was awarded a James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel, A Season in the West. Piers Paul Read lives in London.

By the same author

By the Same Author

Fiction

Game in Heaven with Tussy Marx

The Junkers

Monk Dawson

The Professor’s Daughter

The Upstart

Polonaise

A Married Man

The Villa Golitsyn

The Free Frenchman

A Season in the West

On the Third Day

A Patriot in Berlin

Knights of the Cross

Alice in Exile

The Death of a Pope

Non-fiction

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors

The Train Robbers

Ablaze: The Story of Chernobyl

The Templars

Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography

Hell and Other Destinations