“I believe you,” said Sam. She looked with some regret at the chocolate cake. Somehow in the circumstances it didn’t seem right to ask if she could take a slice to bed with her.

“Yes, I believe you,” she repeated. “But if you think that makes it any better, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ll say goodnight.”

Seated on his rickety chair, staring at his laptop which was perched on the dressing table, Mig Madero heard the stairs creaking. No reason he should recognize the Australian girl’s tread, but he knew it was her.

Her steps were on the landing now. As they reached his door, they hesitated. He found himself willing her to knock. But then the steps moved on.

He recalled words quoted in one of his seminary lectures – he couldn’t recall their source but it didn’t matter – When God’s response to prayer is silence, maybe He’s telling you that you’re praying for something you can do for yourself.

He stood up, moved swiftly to the door and pulled it open.

Sam, her hand on the handle of her own door, looked round.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. Are you OK?”

“I’ve been better. You?”

“OK. I translated that document. Would you like to see it?”

He had a feeling that any direct reference to what had brought her back would have sent her straight into her room.

“Yes, I would,” she said.

He liked the way she didn’t hesitate.

She came into the room and he sat her before the computer then brought up the translation on the screen.

As she read it he stood looking down at her cropped skull. She’d made a real mess of it. He could see cuts and scratches in the skin over which scabs had not yet had time to form.

She said, “Wow. This Miguel, he’s that ancestor you were talking about?”

“Yes,” he said. “My lost ancestor.”

“And now you know what happened to him. That’s amazing.”

“I do not yet know everything, but I will know,” he said.

“I saw you in the bar with Woollass, the one whose daughter you fancy…”

“Gerry,” he said. “And no, I do not fancy Frek.”

“Fallen out, have you?” she said indifferently. “Shouldn’t worry. You fell out with her dad too, but now you’re drinking buddies. There was an old guy there too.”

“Dunstan Woollass. You took in a lot for someone who was so… upset.”

“I suppose I hoped someone would jump up with guilt written all over them and make a break for it, like in the old black-and-whites. Life’s not like the movies though.”

He smiled as he thought of his own cinematic fantasy.

“Sometimes it gets close,” he said.

“Does it? So what were you and the squires doing together?”

“I’ll tell you about it. But first things first.”

He went to his bag and took out a small medicine box.

“My mother insists I always travel with this,” he said. “As usual, she is right.”

He took out a small tube of ointment, squeezed some on to his index finger and gently began to rub it into one of the scratches on her skull. Instinctively she jerked away, then relaxed and did not flinch as his finger resumed contact. As he sought out and anointed her cuts, he gave her a quick sketch of what had happened to him that day, skipping over though not completely censoring his dealings with Frek.

When he finished he didn’t invite comment but tapped his finger gently on her skull and said, “So, are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

“Why not?” she said. “It’s been a good day for finding out about ancestors. Or maybe not so good.”

He listened to her story without interruption.

When she finished, he said, “That is a truly terrible story. May God forgive all those concerned.”

“And that will make it OK, will it?” she snapped. “Well, you can tell this forgiving God of yours he needn’t expect any help from me. You not finished there yet?”

“Not quite.”

In fact he’d dressed even the smallest grazes, but he found himself reluctant to give up this excuse for touching her ravaged head.

Her gaze met his in the mirror. She glowered. He smiled. After a moment, she smiled back.

He said, “So we have been treading parallel paths. Perhaps after all we may turn out to be – what was that phrase you used? – an amiable pair?”

“An amicable pair,” she corrected. “Could be.”

“Anyway,” he went on brusquely, for fear his small diversion toward intimacy might drive her away, “we are both near the final answers now. I wonder if we will want to hear them?”

“I don’t believe in final answers,” she said. “In math, the best answers always ask new questions.”

“Is that what you meant when you said God was the last prime number? If you get the final answer, then you must have found God?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I just meant that there is no last prime number. Euclid offered a proof two thousand years ago. Add one to the product of all known primes and you will have another prime, or a number one of whose factors is an unknown prime. It’s so beautiful it’s probably already in that book I told you about, but they should have put it in the Bible too.”

He thought, I’ll need to learn a new language if I’m to communicate with this woman.

He said, “That’s an oversight I must point out next time I’m invited to speak to the Vatican Council.”

She stood up and examined her head in the mirror.

“That should do the trick. You anoint me any more, you’ll have to make me a queen or something.”

“Queen Sam the First,” he said. “It has a ring to it.”

“You reckon? Thanks anyway. For the treatment. And the talk.”

“I was glad to talk too.”

“You were? I almost knocked on your door as I passed, then I thought that I’d disturbed you enough over the past couple of days.”

“Maybe more than you know,” he said. “I heard you hesitate outside. I’m glad I helped you make up your mind. Talking is always good.”

“Depends who it’s with,” she said. She looked at her watch. “Jeez, it’s still early.”

“Yes, it is. You sound disappointed.”

“It makes for a long night. I wasn’t looking forward to it anyway, not with everything that’s been going on. Now it’ll feel like forever. That’s another reason I almost knocked. I didn’t feel like being on my own.”

He loved her directness. It was rare to meet honesty with no hint of calculation.

“So stay then. By all means,” he said.

“Stay? Is that a proposition?”

He felt himself flushing.

“No! I mean, to talk, if you want. Or if you want to sleep, please, use my bed. I’ll be fine here.”

He indicated the rickety chair.

Sam laughed.

“Not if you want to sleep. Anyway, it’s your bed. You deserve a share of it.”

She must be suggesting he should sit on the end of it. What else could she mean?

He looked at the bed doubtfully.

“It’s very narrow,” he said.

“Me too,” she said. “See. I take up next to no room.”

She moved her hands and stood before him naked. He wouldn’t have believed clothes could be removed so quickly. Nor would he have believed that the sight of a body so skinny with more straight lines than curves and breasts that would vanish in the palms of his hands could have such a devastating effect on him. His mouth went dry, his body burned, his knees buckled with a weakness that had nothing to do with his mountain fall. His now tremulous sight registered that she was a deep golden brown all over except for the fiery red of her pubic hair, then she was sliding out of sight beneath the duvet.

“Acres,” she said. “You could hold that meeting of the Vatican Council in here.”

Perhaps the religious reference should have had a cooling effect. Instead somehow it merely turned up the heat. He may not have matched her speed of undress, but at least he gave it his best shot.

That was his last contact with rational thought for a little while.