Louisa: ‘It makes things easier . . .’ She does not want to talk about it. She is busy running the household but whenever she passes her father she smiles. She is pleased he is there. Or so it would seem. On Christmas Eve they eat sparingly – rice and vegetables. It begins to grow dark. The family go to their bedrooms, not to prepare for bed but to get ready for midnight Mass. The boys wear suits. The girls, pretty party frocks. Louisa comes into the living room, her head covered by a mantilla. ‘Would you like to come?’ Jomier shakes his head. Folklore. Superstition. He understands that it makes things easier, but cannot believe that she believes it – an all-powerful deity arriving from outside the space–time continuum covered in mucous and blood. ‘Twixt pissing and shitting are we born.’ Tertullian. Human beings have no choice. But God?

They leave. Jomier reads. Should he wait up for their return? Or go to bed? If he goes to bed they will wake him or, worse, whisper and tiptoe around the house. He returns to his book but cannot concentrate. Jet lag. Fatigue. Old age. He gets up from his chair, goes out on to the veranda and stands listening to the noises that come from the dark – dogs, cats, insects, frogs. He goes back into the living room, takes a cigarette from a pack of Achalay con filtro left by Jimmy, lights it and returns to the veranda. He has not smoked a cigarette for several years but the setting demands it. Warmth. Darkness. Strange sounds and scented air – eucalyptus, horse dung, smoke from wood fires. He draws on his cigarette and feels dizzy. He sits down on a slatted chair. He feels half happy to be alone, half unhappy at being left out.

They return – all cheerful, the eyes of the little girls gleaming with excitement at staying up so late. The servants appear, aprons over their Sunday best, with dishes of tapas. Jimmy and one of his brothers open bottles of Mendozan sparkling wine. A glass is given to Doña Adelina, enthroned on her chair; another to Jomier. He hesitates, then takes it. The adults, the children, the servants mill around, joking, laughing, teasing. Louisa urges her father to eat the tapas – squares of bread with cheese, chorizo, mashed-up egg. Jomier listens to his eleven-year-old grandson Fernando talk about rugby in a croaking, breaking voice. Over the boy’s shoulder he watches Louisa as she stage-manages this opening of the Christmas celebrations. She does it well. She is like her mother. She was always like her mother. She is like Tilly before the Fall. Or perhaps Tilly at the time of the Fall. She must be older than she looks. Sunshine. Servants. None of the debilitating drudgery under dark skies that ages the middle-class housewife in England.