She removed the cassette from the machine and buried it under some clothes in his suitcase. She packed the camera in her bag, then got back into bed beside him.

They were lying in bed, in the sunlight. ‘I can’t imagine your childhood,’ he said. ‘You are a complete stranger to me. Colombo. Is the place languid?’

‘It’s languid indoors. Frenetic outside.’

‘You don’t go back.’

‘No.’

‘A friend of mine went to Singapore. All that air-conditioning! He said it was like being stuck in Selfridges for a week.’

‘I suspect people in Colombo would love it to be Selfridges.’

Their life together was best in these brief quiet times, lazily, postcoitally conversing. To him she was clear and funny and beautiful, to her he was married, always interesting, permanently defensive. Two out of three was not good.

They had met on another occasion, in Montreal. Anil was there for a convention, and Cullis had run into her in a hotel lobby quite by chance.

‘I’m sneaking away,’ she said. ‘Enough!’

‘Have dinner with me.’

‘I’ve got plans. I promised myself this evening with a group of friends. Join us. We’ve had days and days of papers. I promise you the worst meal in Montreal if you come with me.’

They drove through the suburbs.

‘Do you speak French?’ he asked.

‘No. Just English. I can write some Sinhala.’

‘Is that your background?’

A no-name plaza appeared on the side of the highway, and she parked beneath the blinking lights of a Bowlerama. ‘I live here,’ she said. ‘In the West.’

Cullis was introduced to seven other anthropologists, who looked him over carefully and considered his posture to assess whether he would be useful on their team.