The woman’s voice was strong and deep, though a little hoarse, and as her guitar was plugged into a loudspeaker she could be heard from a fair distance, and many people would stop for a moment and toss coins in her guitar case. Jack and the girl would sit on the sidewalk and listen to her. Between songs, she told them what it had been like in the past, in the East, when she was part of a group of musicians. She said that she sang now to warm the hearts of the men and women who had once had a house, relatives and friends somewhere in the vast land of America and who, after losing everything, had drifted along on the current and washed up on the shores of the Pacific.

They liked the woman, because of her songs and because of the things she told them, but they liked her for another reason, too. One day the man had shown her the photograph of his brother, and she said that she saw him now and then. But she wasn’t sure it was him because his hair was grey, not black.

One afternoon, when La Grande Sauterelle was walking through some neighbouring streets, Jack was sitting on the curb and talking with the old woman. She was reminiscing about the past again. She was saying that old Billy Monroe was her hero.

“Don’t talk to me about heroes!” said the man.

“Why?” she asked.

“I’ve travelled a long way and all my heroes . . .”

He didn’t complete his sentence because La Grande Sauterelle came running up. The cat was clinging to her shoulder and his ears were flattened back.

“He’s there!” she exclaimed.

“Who?” asked Jack.

“Théo!” she said. “He’s there, I just saw him.”

She pointed to the corner of Powell and Market. She was out of breath.

Jack got up, very excited.

“What? You saw him? Where? Are you sure? How long ago? Did you talk to him?”

When she had got her breath back, La Grande Sauterelle replied that she had just seen him. She hadn’t talked to him, she’d come at once. He was in the sort of amphitheatre across from the subway station. In the tier in the middle. Sitting on a bench.

“What’s going on?” asked the old woman, but no one answered her.

“All right, I’m going right now,” said Jack.

He ran off, then stopped and came back.

“Will you wait here for me?” he asked the girl.

“Of course,” she said.

She kissed his cheek and gave him a friendly little push. He took two or three steps — and came back again. He gave her the keys to the hotel room.

“You might need them,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Then he spoke to the old woman. “Excuse me, I have to go and see somebody over there.”

“That’s all right,” said the old lady.

“He’s my brother.”