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‘It’s important. Important for me too. I want to see it all. Particularly after you got me here under false pretences. Which way?’
    ‘Let’s take a taxi.’
    ‘I’d rather walk, if you’re up to it. I’ve been sitting too much. Feel as if I’ve been on planes for weeks. And I spent most of last night tossing and turning.’
    Bruno nodded and matched his step to her long, loose stride. ‘I didn’t ask them to send for you, you know. The hospital must have found your name under next of kin in my passport. They did it without asking me.’
    ‘So you’ve already told me. But they had reason. You were out cold. And not exactly in your first youth. They were right. Altogether responsible. So stop complaining. Anyhow, I’m thrilled that you’re up and about. I had you nicely stretched out in a long, low coffin by the time the plane finally landed. And when thehospital managed to explain that they’d lost you, I thought…’ She rolled her eyes like a silent film star. ‘Never mind all that now. I’m thrilled to be here. Overjoyed. You should have asked me in the first place, Pops. I would have come with you in a flash. I did come in a flash.’
    She wound her arm through his, and he patted her hand, again aware of the blatantly disapproving stares of strangers. Let them stare. Let them eat their petty hearts out. Let them have fantasies of miscegenation and stoke the ardour of their barely hidden race-hatred. He adored the big, black, beautiful woman at his side. He adored his daughter. Loved her throaty voice with its whoops of laughter, her humour, sharp and cajoling by turn, her wit, her long gangling limbs, which still left her with a residue of the baseball-playing tomboy she had once so emphatically been before she transformed herself into a bewitching woman.
    Now that she was beside him, he realized again how much he missed her now that distance separated them. Easy, spur-of- the-moment encounters were out of the question. London and Los Angeles were just a little too far apart for a last-minute dinner or concert or a casual walk. And a disembodied voice on the telephone was good but not the same.
    ‘Must have been difficult leaving work and…and everyone so quickly?’
    She gave him a look of mock severity. ‘I’m a very efficient woman when needs be, Pops. And the Agency provides me with assistants who can talk to the clients well enough. Then there’s always this,’ she patted her jacket pocket where she kept her mobile, ‘for emergencies and for those poor, despairing writers blocking on a sixth rewrite. As for the rest of those “everyones” you’re too polite to ask about, nothing has changed since we saw each other over Christmas. There isn’t one who minds. So I’m all yours.’
    It had always puzzled Bruno that this wonderful woman who was his daughter wasn’t besieged by suitors. Unless men had changed so radically that he could fail to identify one, it seemed to him that the choice must be hers. That she kept them at bay after the unhappy episode of her first marriage.
    ‘I’m all yours, that is, if you don’t go all secretive and moody. I don’t see why you can’t just march me to the old family home and ask to see it properly. I know…I know, the accident was unfortunate, so you’re a little wary. And the memories can’t be of the best… Still… You’ve come to a conference on memory, not amnesia . So you’ll just have to follow suit.’
    Her voice was an invitation to tell the story he had always avoided, never filling in anything but the barest details. As if he still had the need to hide. Even now. Today. The habit of disguise went deep. He hadn’t shown her the newspaper article with the vile insinuations that had so troubled him. Or confessed that the accident with the skate-boarder had brought graver scenes in its train.
    They were crossing a green in front of the massive Votivkirche. His father’s voice suddenly rang in his ears. His father telling him in