William looked at her over the rim of his glass. “That chap? The one who drowned?” He had heard this nonsense before, not from Marcia, but from a book he had picked up and read while waiting his turn at the hairdressers. It was a well-thumbed paperback called Things They Don’t Want You to Know, and it had included this story.

“He didn’t drown,” snapped Marcia. “He was called Harold Holt, and he didn’t drown.”

William pursed his lips. “Oh. Well …”

“He was picked up by a Chinese submarine,” continued Marcia. “It was waiting offshore because they knew he was going swimming. They got him.”

William shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “Why would they do a thing like that?”

Marcia looked mysterious. “They think in centuries,” she said. “As you know.”

William stared at her. This was one of the reasons why it would be impossible to have Marcia as anything more than a friend. It was not that she was always irrational – she was not – but there were times when he found it difficult to fathom how she thought. For his part, he was used to reaching a conclusion on the basis of what he knew to be true from the evidence of his senses. Marcia seemed to go about it in a very different way. She leaped to conclusions, and then tried to construct a basis for her position after the fact. And she would often also resort to the most extraordinary non sequiturs, as she did with this reference to the Chinese thinking in centuries. That was their diplomacy, was it not – they took the long view – but he did not see the relevance of this to the alleged kidnapping of an Australian Prime Minister.