The door closed. Eleanor listened to the sound of her own breathing. She lifted her head and looked out of the window and felt a moment of relief, of satisfaction, at the blue sky and the dazzling brightness of the morning, at the world returned to its natural state. Nothing bad could happen on such a day, and the horror of the man with the gun slid a little into the background, became fixed in her thoughts with the darkness and the incessant rain of yesterday. She took off her spectacles and peered at the fig tree outside. There was no sign of the possum. Instead, there was a large white cockatoo, indeed several cockatoos, released from the tyranny of the rain, wheeling and dipping and shrieking to one another high above the old tree.

But she had been writing in her journal. She looked down and the page was blank. She stared at the blank page and imagined words on it. She remembered the throng of ministers, how clever it was, that phrase, how pithy. That was what she had been going to write. But it no longer seemed clever. It no longer seemed pithy. It seemed dead. She could not write it. And that was Alasdair’s world, not hers.

Instead she wrote: I believe that today is the day.

Downstairs Alasdair was already at his breakfast, seated at the far end of the table, one leg crossed over the other, the newspaper open on the table before him, a half-drunk cup of coffee at his elbow. He wore a morning suit, light grey and pinstriped, and a matching waistcoat. His choice of suit was entirely dictated by the time of day and not by the climate, he wore the same suits all the year round, no matter the season. Man had reached a point in his evolution where he controlled the elements, they did not control him—it was not something Alasdair had actually said but it was what he believed. It was something all men believed, despite the daily evidence to the contrary. For all summer long, violent cyclones buffeted the tropical northern coast and occasionally they destroyed whole settlements in a single day, and every week ships floundered in great storms and were dashed to pieces against the rocks. It was right there in his newspaper. But every day Alasdair put on a light grey pinstriped morning suit, every day he read his paper.

Eleanor sat down and poured herself a coffee. ‘Good morning, Alasdair.’

‘Good morning.’