‘We looked and looked,’ Heidi repeated. ‘Everywhere. Then it started to rain.’ She paused, raising her eyes, gluey still from weeping, to look properly into his. ‘So much bad luck, Lucas. It is like the universe is against us.’

‘The universe?’

She turned her head at the sound of something Lucas couldn’t hear. ‘And now Mutti is calling, so I must go. Lucas, I am so sorry for the ring… so sorry.’

‘Heidi, wait—’

‘I have to go. We are eating now. I am sorry, Lucas.’

‘Can we talk tomorrow, then?’

‘Yes. Tomorrow.’ She had gone calm and flat. Her mouth looked swollen, and he found himself wondering how crying could do that.

‘The ring, it doesn’t matter,’ he said softly. ‘Okay?’

She nodded. ‘Okay. Thank you, Lucas.’

After the call, Lucas stayed on the sofa. Despite the chill in the room, he felt hot and drained. His throat pulsed. Fatigue was pulling him down, a drug, promising oblivion and respite. He swivelled and lay on his side on the sofa, drawing his knees up, using his palms as a pillow for his cheek. The universe. Against them. He kicked the thought away and closed his eyes. Sleep came fast, bringing not rest, but a labyrinth of dead ends, blocking hopeless quests for lost rings, lost children, and answers to questions he couldn’t understand.

20

Esther woke early on Sunday morning, full of resolve to throw herself straight back into her manual labours, only to be blind-sided by a second postcard from Dylan, falling out from between a pile of junk-mail catalogues as she was dropping them into her recycling bin.

‘I almost threw it away,’ she confessed, her voice trembling slightly, once she had succeeded in getting both Lucas and Lily on a FaceTime call. ‘Then we wouldn’t even have known…’

‘That he’s in Barcelona supposedly en route to Buenos Aires?’ chipped in Lily scathingly. She was tousled and still in her pyjamas, clearly tetchy at having been prised from her bed. ‘It doesn’t exactly change anything, does it?’

‘But how the hell can he afford to go there?’ Lucas grunted. ‘By magic carpet?’

‘He must have savings from his bar work, and be getting jobs as he goes,’ Esther said feebly. ‘I mean, that is what he said he was going to do. Lily, I don’t suppose you have heard…’

‘No,’ she snapped, ‘I have not. And I still think he is an idiot.’

‘Let’s see it again,’ Lucas said, in a voice so croaky that Esther realised he had to be fighting off some bug. His skin was doing that thing it did, of looking colourless as opposed to pale, and there were scaly bits on his lips that made her long to reach for her lip balm.