When Claire finishes in the library for the day and steps out into the warm evening, she is overwhelmed with a sense of desolation. The Haarlemers are all hurrying somewhere, by bike or on foot, but there is nowhere for Claire to go, nobody for her to see. Into this emptiness rushes a vision of her mother, hundreds of miles away, alone with a robot. She walks around the park and rings home.

‘Claire, I can’t talk right now, Patience has made a chicken Kiev.’

‘But are you all right?’

‘Well – if you mean, are my hands still on fire? then the answer’s yes, but that’s not going to change, is it?’

‘Can you put Patience on?’

‘No, not really, she’s doing the dishes. Bye!’

Claire circles the park, avoiding the pubs, the quiet apartment. She thinks of her brother, Ross, the traveller, the now-expatriate, who would surely be completely at ease in a European city at night, would know where to go and what to say, how to focus on the world around him.

The park is planted with tulips – of course – great stiff hordes of them, their stems completely rigid, their petals sloping in sharply at the tips. Claire is like that somehow: tulip-shaped. The opening of her, the interface, is tiny, tiny, the interior surprisingly large. And her mother is somehow the opposite. She is all surface area, everything shamelessly on show.

Patience is a good listener; and, it turns out, a wonderful baker. Jacqueline looks forward to a warm fruit scone at four o’clock. Then she begins to expect it. When Jacqueline’s in bed, Patience waits downstairs, open-eyed, all night, like a Roman soldier. And she is tireless about the housework, full of respect for Jacqueline’s things. ‘This is very fine tweed, Jacqui. It must be cleaned very carefully.’ ‘This dish mustn’t go in the dishwasher. The pattern will fade.’

‘I wish you’d stop pretending to care so much,’ Jacqueline says to her one day.

‘May I ask why?’

‘Because it’s a load of rubbish. You didn’t choose to be here, did you?’

‘No. But were I able to make a choice, I would choose to stay with you. You are a fascinating woman.’

‘Oh, I’m fascinating, am I?’

‘Why do you sound surprised?’

‘I’m not surprised. I suppose you’re programmed with things like that to say, aren’t you? I suppose your memory banks are all prepared.’

‘I am made to appreciate what is most unique and interesting about the person I live with. It’s a very complex process, and my response to you is unique, because you are a unique person, and our conversations follow a unique pattern. However, it might satisfy you to know that although every person is unique, some are more unique than others, if I may use such a tautology; and you are certainly among a small minority of the population, both in terms of your life experiences and your psychological profile. That is why I question your scepticism. You can be sceptical of me, of course, but you cannot be sceptical of what I’m saying. I think you know this about yourself.’