There was, for instance, the compulsion to return to the calamity of Liu’s child—to deplore it yet again, or replay it with a happy ending. Getting away with something—the narrow squeak—is, he had always realised, a strong theme of life and art: powerful because it creates suspense. One never quite loses hope that Hamlet will discard the poisoned foil, that Juliet will awake in time, Cavaradossi rise up living, and the royal family escape from Varennes. The world loves long odds—Marathon, Lepanto, the Armada; Dunkirk. As to that, he thought, I’ve had my share of rescues, first by Crindle at Florence, then from Leith in the desert. And done little enough with the reprieve. Good fortune is a prodigy whose occasion one must rise to. Unpractised in such notions, I could not rescue Liu’s child, or save myself.