She double-checked the booking on the cargo plane from Hong Kong, then finished the time-consuming insurance papers. Josh remained mysteriously and thankfully absent, or perhaps her silence in the car had told him she preferred to be alone. Célie quietly came and went with food, appearing just as D’Arcy’s stomach began to growl, and D’Arcy ate as she worked. In the afternoon, D’Arcy collected her cameras, the mics, the LED light kit and the light-stand that she’d bought in Paris and knocked on the door of Jessica May’s room.

Jess sat in a chair on the balcony with a pot of tea and two cups. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said.

“I’ll get set up,” D’Arcy said, assembling one camera on a tripod, positioned to fit both chairs into the frame, and one camera ready for close-up shots. She studied the scene through the lens, saw that the light was good, that there was no distracting ambient noise, and leaned down to pin a lapel mic to Jess’s shirt. Jess smiled at her as she did so.

“I can see why you were a model,” D’Arcy said as she straightened.

“Oh?”

“Your smile.” D’Arcy searched for the right way to express herself. “It makes a person feel as if they’re the only one ever to have been smiled upon, that the gesture has just been invented by Jessica May, exclusively for them.”

“That’s a lovely thing to say. You have a way with words.”

Beyond, D’Arcy could see all the way down to the crazy trees and she tried not to be ensnared by them again. But one caught her eye; it stood apart from the rest, boughs curled back in on themselves like the arms of a mother empty of child. D’Arcy was reminded of the panels in the salon downstairs, of the child depicted there: was it as lost as D’Arcy or was it found?

She sat abruptly in a chair opposite Jess. “I don’t have anything formal prepared,” she said. “I normally would, but I tried to write down some questions and it didn’t work. Sometimes it’s best not to force it and this whole thing is a bit strange so…” She shrugged. “I thought I’d wing it. Which mightn’t sound professional, but there it is.” She knew her voice had a defiant ring to it, that she was being childishly provoking because of her suspicion that everything she’d found out in Paris could somehow be traced back to Jess, which made Jess the one to blame.

But Jess simply nodded. “I winged it the entire way through the war. And it didn’t make my photographs any less newsworthy.” She folded her hands in her lap, as if to indicate she was ready.

Where to start? Why are you telling the world who you are now? Why did you hide who you were? Why did you tell me? Who are you to me? Trite questions, the facile investigations of a petty teenager. “Which of your reports from the war are you most proud of?” D’Arcy asked.