She poured herself a glass of wine and sat down to catch up on potential donations.

Working was like wading through mud. Again, she checked outside the window.

‘I will not be broken,’ Tomas told her. ‘Never.’

All these years Laure had been schooling herself to accept that, almost certainly, one way or another, Tomas had been broken. He had wanted to keep his ideals, his purpose, his music, and it devastated Laure to think that he might have bludgeoned into other ways of thinking.

If he was alive.

In the bedroom, Laure got undressed and cleansed and moisturized her face with the most expensive creams she could afford. (Why not?) Having stepped out of her underclothes, she reached for the oversized T-shirt she favoured for sleeping in. Air played over her back and breasts. It was almost a caress and longing caught her cruelly.

Could he be alive? She had failed to find him when she tried but it was possible. Just.

If so, did he ever turn his face to the west and think of her? That girl?

Perhaps he did.

Not knowing was a hydra-headed, tormenting adversary. It never admitted defeat, it almost never retreated. It bided its time in the rock pools and under the stones of the mind and spirit, waiting on the turn of the tide to race back in.

If he was alive, Tomas might well have loved others. Women? Men?

Every seven to fifteen years, the cells in the body were replaced. Bone, skin, stomach, liver. The lot. Having read about it in a scientific journal, Laure was cheered because it suggested renaissance and renewal were possible. But it also meant she was walking around with every cell in her body replenished and he would be too. They would have learnt new ways of thinking – or she had – developed unfamiliar physical responses, new knowledge and desires. They would move differently, eat differently, their views on sex, love and politics almost certainly would diverge.

‘I wish I could touch you,’ she said aloud. She almost added, just once, but that was to be stupid. Just once would not be enough.

Later, she lay in bed and sobbed for one fragile little cat.

For the question that had never been answered.

And all the other things, too.

The daily post arrived with a larger than usual haul and the subsequent discussion of its contents took up much of the working day. The cigarette packet on the inside of which were columns of numbers written down with the word ‘divorce settlement’ was shocking and amusing. The shoebox filled with sea shells with no return address was an enigma. Laure gave in to temptation and plunged a hand down into them, enjoying the feel of their whorls and curves and the faintest of salty tangs. The note that came with them read: ‘Sadly, the tide went out and never turned.’