I walked back to my office, tracing a roughly diagonal line across campus. By the time I’d reached the front door of my building I was incredibly thirsty and could feel a scrim of dried perspiration on the back of my neck. I had already, of course, read what was written on the piece of folded paper that the guest lecturer had given me—it was the first thing I had done while still sitting on the bench, following her departure.

My suspicion had been correct—it was a piece of stationery from the Old Mission Hotel. That, in and of itself, however, was unremarkable, I told myself, because that was where the guest lecturer had stayed; I’d seen her in her hotel room with my own eyes! No doubt the explanation was simply that it had been the most convenient piece of notepaper at her disposal. I shook my head. The fact that the guest lecturer had written her note to me on the hotel stationery with which I’d recently become so intimately familiar was the least remarkable development in the whole series of recent events.

Considerably less remarkable, for example, than the scar on her arm. It had not escaped my notice that it was a scar the shape and orientation of which I had seen before, on the real estate agent’s arm at my father’s open house. A coincidence, surely, but what were the odds? A connection between the two women seemed unlikely at best.

Then I came to what was written on the piece of paper—a name, just as she’d promised: Daniel Shriver—a name with absolutely no significance for me. Nor, to my knowledge, was it connected in any way to my father. Though it was true that I was far from having a complete list of his contacts. And when people used aliases to check into hotel rooms (something I had no experience with myself) did they necessarily use names of personal significance? Surely sometimes it was more convenient to invent one out of thin air, or to pluck one at random from a newspaper or a film. Daniel Shriver—it could be someone, or no one at all.