‘I know, Maia, you’ve already said.’

Two hours later, having booked flights and a hotel and with a hurriedly packed suitcase in hand, I left Atlantis. As the launch carried me smoothly across the water to Geneva, it suddenly struck me that I had no idea whether I was running away from my past or towards it.

9

Due to the five hours’ time difference, I found myself on Brazilian soil at six o’clock the following morning. Expecting to step out into the glaring South American sun, I was disappointed to arrive to a cloudy sky. Of course, I realised, I’d arrived in their winter, which – even though the temperature was still in the high seventies – meant the absence of the intense tropical heat I’d anticipated. As I emerged into the arrivals hall, I saw a man holding a board with my name upon it.

‘Olá, eu sou Senhorita D’Aplièse. Como você está?’ I asked in Portuguese as I approached the driver, and enjoyed the look of surprise on his face.

As he led me to the car and we drove out of the airport towards Rio, I gazed through the window with avid interest. This was the city – apparently – of my birth. Even though I’d travelled to Brazil during my second year at university, the exchange programme had been based at a university in São Paulo, and my travels had taken me up to the old capital of Salvador. Stories of Rio and its crime, poverty and wild nightlife had made me wary of visiting, especially as a single woman. But now, here I was, and if Pa Salt’s information was correct, I was part of its DNA and it was part of mine.

The driver, happy to have a rare foreigner who spoke fluent Portuguese in his car, asked me where I was from.

‘Here. I was born here,’ I replied.

He surveyed me in the rear-view mirror.

‘Why, of course! Now I can see you look Brazilian! But your surname is D’Aplièse, so I presumed you were French. You’re here to visit relatives?’

‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ I replied, the truth of the words resonating in my brain.

‘Look.’ The driver pointed upwards to a high mountain on which a white statue stood, arms wide open, embracing the city. ‘There is our Cristo Redentor. I always know I’m home when I see Him for the first time.’

I gazed up at the pale, elegantly sculpted figure, who seemed to be hovering amidst the clouds like an angelic apparition. Even though, just like the rest of the world, I’d seen the image countless times in the media, the reality was breathtaking and surprisingly moving.

‘You have been up to visit Him?’ my driver asked.

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Then you are a true native of Rio – a carioca!’ he said with a grin. ‘Even though he’s one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World, we in Rio take the statue for granted. It’s the tourists who flock to it.’