As a favour to Nicolas, Father David has interceded with the bishop to allow the burial of a suicide. The ecclesiastical hierarchy is disposed to look kindly on his wish. Bessie and her daughter will be interred together in the communal plot. But there will be no stone. Celeste the maid and Nicolas are the only mourners. They have to avert their eyes from the child’s tiny coffin as Father David sings Dushe moya: Spirit arise.

It has occurred to Nicolas before, but this time more forcibly, that he could be the father of Marianne. The timing of the birth makes her paternity ambiguous. He knows Bessie wouldn’t have told him if he was. As the coffins are lowered, he has a sense that an important part of himself is being consigned to oblivion.

A caretaker’s lodge guards the entrance to the cemetery. During the service, Nicolas becomes aware of a stranger standing there, keeping a respectful distance. It is Rachkovsky, wearing a pale linen suit and a pair of spectacles with purple lenses. He has a bouquet of gerberas in one hand, which he places beside the grave at the conclusion of the burial, and a walking stick in the other. ‘I came to apologise,’ he says. ‘Shall we walk?’ Nicolas falls into step, and the two men tour the avenues of the dead.

Nicolas knows that Rachkovsky has swallowed his pride to be here, and suspects there will be a compensatory attack somewhere down the line. It comes almost immediately.

‘I read your book, the India one. I was in bed with Maria – itself a rarity – and I said, that dear boy, something’s curiously flat about his style. I thought, what’s wrong with him? Where’s his panache? Where’s his vim?’ All this without meeting Nicolas’s eye. Rachkovsky pauses by a grave and moves some bugloss stems aside with his cane so he can read the inscription. ‘When you said you knew her before, I should have guessed then. Since we last spoke, I’ve made some enquiries and it’s come to my attention that you and … Bessie …’ – the slight hesitation signals his solicitude, his desire to accommodate Nicolas’s version of the truth – ‘… were closer than I imagined. I’m not a monster, Nicolas. If you’d told me she meant something to you, I would have understood. The document I gave you is a provocation I’ve been refining with Mulhouse. If I’d known the true situation, I wouldn’t have insisted on it.’

Now he looks at Nicolas directly. Rachkovsky knows sincerity is as important to an enchantment as salt to cooking: a judicious pinch of it in everything. But Nicolas can only see his own face in the purple lenses, and what he sees is a sad, middle-aged Jew.

‘I appreciate your coming,’ Nicolas says.

Rachkovsky reaches out and gives his shoulder a squeeze. He points towards the onion-shaped cupola of the tiny church with his cane. ‘You’re the wordsmith: would you call that blue or teal?’