‘I do.’ Horribly it occurred to her that perhaps she wept because in fact she did not want this real Nathan, in his compromised flesh. Was this what she’d waited for? Had she bartered her soul for a gaunt man with a wife and child and a dragging foot?

‘My trouble,’ said Thomas, ‘is that I have two suns, and neither outshines the other. In Bethesda I’m the worst of sinners, and in London I’m the strangest of saints, and I am never comfortable anywhere.

What should I do now, James? I’ve seen Foulis Street on the London map, I know the look of the houses – I could go there now and look through each letter box, and see if comet-light comes out. But after all this time I have no name and no house number, and what would I be but an old fool limping back to Liverpool Street empty-handed and alone, on s

Then dancers came by, and for a time obscured the view: old men and young ones, half-drunk or drunk entirely; girls clasped together and turning in stately circles; old lovers quick-stepping in practised concourse. Dazed by beer and music, Thomas saw all the threads that bound them in varieties of human bondage – knots made of habit, blood, resentm

This is like fear, she thought, it’s as if I’m afraid for my life – and in fact she was afraid for her life, which she had created out of whatever leftovers she had to hand, and which she sometimes loved.

She existed. She had not existed, and then she had, summoned out of whatever matter her consciousness had been made, and had stuck her small bare foot in his door. It was disastrous. There was a pain in his heart, as if it had acquired a new chamber to contain her, and so all his life he’d be carting her about.

Overhead there’s the whole black dome of the sky, and every star is out. Imagine also that time is racing by: that for us each hour is ten thousand years. So as we stand there watching, the oaks and willows quickly become immense, die back, reseed, and grow again – and overhead the stars are dancing in their proper motion: Orion throwing his spear,

‘You must think me mad,’ she said, ‘to still love a boy I last saw ten years ago. But it doesn’t make any difference, not to me.’ ‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘Distance separates you from him, and if the units of distance were miles and not years, nobody would think it strange

‘I was sorry,’ said Thomas gravely, ‘to hear of your loss. The death of a father,’ he said, frowning at the window, ‘is at the same time both quite proper in the order of things, and incomprehensibly stupid.’ ‘I never saw him use it,’ said Carleton, containing tears, ‘and I don’t know how it works. It is a planisphere. A map of the stars.’