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don’t. He’s such a liar, she said. He believes his own narcissistic fantasy of himself. Or was that Salvatore? One of the two and which is which?
    Was Jack a real man or not a real man? There’s no knowing.
    Has my ancient stalker fucked off? There’s no more knocking or perhaps I passed out and slept through it. My head swirls as I totter back to check.
    The eye has vanished. I ease open the door, with a view to knocking the guy down as any real man would. Bilious light falls on nothing but a tray with the remains of a Room Service meal and a figure walking away, away, right at the end of the corridor towards the lift. On he goes, and on, without seeming to make progress. A hangdog fellow walking the wrong way along a moving floor.
    *
    â€˜Don’t speak to me, just don’t. Until I’m fuelled.’ Mary’s wearing dark glasses. Setting down her tray, she swigs black coffee. ‘What was that wine? Brontosaur piss?’
    â€˜Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth!’ says Jarvis. ‘Keats. Forget which ode.’
    â€˜By the way,’ Mary says, between mouthfuls of toast. ‘I’ve just been embraced. In the foyer of the hall. Pass the sugar, would you, Seb? I need a sugar hit. Yes, your pal embraced me like a sister. On an empty stomach. Oh my Lord. I had this strange sense – I don’t think it was the hangover, might have been though – that he’s coming apart from himself. Honestly, I kept seeing him double, as if I’d got a lazy eye. Actually I used to have a lazy eye when I was a kid. You know what I mean, Seb? Look.’
    Mary makes her left eye swivel out of focus so that she can, she says, see both of me. ‘I found this a useful skill when I was a kid. If my parents told me off for bringing dead voles or owl droppings into my bedroom to dissect, I’d just let my eyeball swing out – like – this. See? Kind-of unnerving, right? When they threatened me with an operation, I decided the party trick had outlived its usefulness.’
    â€˜Put your eye back, Mary,’ says Jarvis. ‘You’re turning me off my seaweed.’
    How can he stomach that mess of laverbread, cockles and plankton, swimming in a liquor of grease? He will be embarking shortly on a new diet, Jarvis announces, which will reveal to the world the svelte man within. Bara lawr, he explains, is an essential brainfood. Protein, iron, iodine: you name it, your laverbread has it all.
    â€˜But what did Rhys say?’ I ask Mary.
    â€˜What did he say? Don’t ask me. And what did he mean by what he said? How would I know? Well, let’s see – he talked about his daughter – who I assume is real. Apple of his eye. She’s a polyglot according to him – translator, cosmopolitan, brilliant, beautiful, et cetera. I take what people say about their kids with several pinches of salt, frankly, especially when they start claiming the kid has good genes on both sides. Anyway, what else? He was talking quite ardently about a woman, forgotten her name. Alice? Eloise? Lisa? Ring any bells?’
    Elise, I think. Elise. I say nothing. My mother has never spoken of Rhys, at least as far as I remember.
    â€˜This Alice or whatever seems to have been the love of his life but she turned him down flat. Smart lady! Head screwed on. He said his wife – he refers to her as his second wife – died. But who was his first wife? – the Alice-one who refused him? Oh please. Don’t ask! This guy is so deep he has come out of the nether end of himself.’
    She finally asked Salvatore why he didn’t study something substantial – like a newt or a rat? Anything, really, that was not just a sludge of gloopy metaphors. In any case, Mary told him, she’d heard that postmodernism was passé . And he looked quite stricken: apparently the daughter says the same. He finally said, OK, Mary, if you want wildlife, let’s discuss