I want to be exact about what I did with that photograph, because the whole of the rest of my life came out of the next nine days.

I looked at it for about two hours.

Then I wrote to her — not called, wrote, because I could not trust my voice — and I did not ask her a question.

I want that understood.

I did not say what is this. I sent her the photograph and I said: Don’t insult me by explaining.

She wrote back within forty minutes and it was a long message and it explained everything, and it named Luca’s partner, and it offered me his phone number, and it said please call me, please, it’s four in the morning here and I’m not going to sleep until you call.

I did not read past the first two lines.