Kit looked rested. But he also seemed troubled.

‘What’s the matter, Kit-Kat?’ Zita twirled.

‘I don’t need your larks now, Zita.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport.’ She kissed him on the cheek.

Kit scowled. Then he suddenly grabbed a bunch of flowers from the china vase and stormed out. Looking askance at Tom, Zita followed him, and Tom came behind.

Kit led them up to the study.

‘He’s gone,’ said Zita, as they stood on the threshold. At first none of them wanted to step inside. A faint uneasiness hung about, as if somehow Jack might still be lurking in a hidden recess, a shadow, a gap in reality that they were not aware of, could not be aware of.

‘I can’t believe it, quite.’

They went in. Tom turned on the light and the room seemed to have lost something. The floorboards creaked under their feet. The stuffed crocodile’s eyes were dull, its skin dusty. The vials were empty. There was Jack’s desk, no longer forbidding and strange. The desk drawer came open when Tom tried it, and inside it was the box. It was a lovely thing, carved and jewelled.

‘Don’t touch it.’

Tom sensed around it with his mind. ‘It’s all right. There’s nothing in it.’ He placed his hand on it. It held no power now.

Kit nodded and picked it up. Then he stalked out, and the others, slightly at a loss, followed him. He grabbed a torch from the kitchen. The moon was bright and the evening was warm. Behind them the farmhouse was lit up, lights in every room.

They followed him over the dark lawn to the woods. Kit walked with determination, not answering Tom or Zita’s questions as they trotted to keep up with him, until they reached a clearing.

‘Here,’ he said, switching off the torch. ‘’Twas here.’

He laid the box down in the moonlight on the forest floor, and the flowers beside it, and removed the prayerbook from his pocket, and knelt on the earth. The trees around them rustled and when Kit finished, he sat back on his haunches and only then did he smile.

‘’Twas here,’ he said, and it was the clearest Tom had ever heard him speak. ‘Here we took her. I shall not forget.’ He laid the flowers over the box.

And they were surrounded. All around them loomed the Samdhya, in human form. They could not get past them if they wanted, each one carrying a sword or a spear.

Rohenga strode forwards, all panther litheness. Kit tensed, and appeared to accept that this would be the moment he died. It was too fast for Tom or Zita to try to do anything about it.

But when Rohenga reached Kit, he kneeled too.

‘We can forgive,’ he said. ‘And we forgive you, Christopher Last.’

An expression of relief spread over Kit’s face that Tom would remember for ever.