I stared through the curving smoke of his cigar. ‘I doubt I will ever love again.’

‘Good. You are, of course, allowed to love food and music and champagne and rare sunny afternoons in October. You can love the sight of waterfalls and the smell of old books, but the love of people is off limits. Do you hear me? Don’t attach yourself to people, and try to feel as little as you possibly can for those you do meet. Because otherwise you will slowly lose your mind . . .’ He paused for a while. ‘Eight years, that’s the rule. That’s the most an alba can stay anywhere before things get really tricky. That’s the Eight-Year Rule. You have a nice life for eight years. Then I send you on a task. Then you have a new life. With no ghosts.’

I believed him. How could I not? Hadn’t I lost myself after Rose? Wasn’t I still, in a sense, waiting to find myself again? A nice life. Maybe it was possible. With a structure. With something to belong to. With a purpose.

‘Do you know your Greek myths, Tom?’

‘A little.’

‘Well, I am like Daedalus. You know, the creator of the labyrinth that held the minotaur safe. I’ve had to build a labyrinth to protect all of us. This society. But the trouble with Daedalus is that for all his wisdom people didn’t always listen to him. His own son, Icarus, didn’t listen. You know that story, don’t you?’

‘Yes. He and Icarus try to escape from the Greek island—’

‘Crete.’

‘Crete. Yes. But their wings are made of wax and feathers. And his father . . .’

‘Daedalus.’

‘His father tells him not to fly too close to the sun or to the sea, or his wings will catch fire or get soaked.’

‘And of course both things happen. He goes too close to the sun. The wax melts. He falls in the sea. Now, you are not too high. But you have lived too low. It’s a balance. I am here to help you get the balance right. How do you see yourself, Tom?’

‘Not as Icarus.’

‘Then who?’

‘That’s a big question.’

‘It’s a most important question.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you someone who watches life, or someone who participates?’

‘Both, I suppose. Watching, participating.’

He nodded. ‘What are you capable of?’

‘What?’

‘Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been around the world.’

‘No, I mean, where have you been morally? What have you done? How many lines have you crossed?’

‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘Because, within the structure of the rules, you need to be free.’

I was uneasy. I should have trusted that feeling, instead of just sipping champagne. ‘What do we need to be free to do?’

He smiled. ‘We live long lives, Tom. We live long lives. Long and secret lives. We do whatever’s necessary.’ The smile became a laugh. He had good teeth, considering how many centuries he’d had them. ‘Now, today, hot dogs.’

London, now

We live long lives, Tom . . .

There is a tree in California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine that was found, after an intensive ring count, to be five thousand and sixty-five years old.

Even to me, that pine seems old. In recent years, whenever I have despaired of my condition and needed to feel a bit more mortal and ordinary, I think of that tree in California. It has been alive since the Pharaohs. It has been alive since the founding of Troy. Since the start of the Bronze Age. Since the start of yoga. Since mammoths.

And it has stayed there, calmly in its spot, growing slowly, producing leaves, losing leaves, producing more, as those mammoths became extinct, as Homer wrote The Odyssey, as Cleopatra reigned, as Jesus was nailed to a cross, as Siddhartha Gautama left his palace to weep for his suffering subjects, as the Roman Empire declined and fell, as Carthage was captured, as water buffalo were domesticated in China, as the Incas built cities, as I leaned over the well with Rose, as America fought with itself, as world wars happened, as Facebook was invented, as millions of humans and other animals lived and fought and procreated and went, bewildered, to their fast graves, the tree had always been the tree.

That was the familiar lesson of time. Everything changes and nothing changes.

I stand like a vertical headache in front of twenty-eight fourteen-year-olds, slumping back on chairs, playing with pens, surreptitiously checking their phones. It is a tough crowd, but I’ve had tougher over the years. This is certainly easier than playing to the drunken sailors, thieves and drifters of the Minerva Inn in Plymouth, for instance.

Everything changes and nothing changes.

‘The East End is a multicultural area because it has always been a multicultural area,’ I say, as an opener to the lesson focusing on Pre-Twentieth-Century Immigration. ‘No one was ever a native of Britain. People arrived here. The Romans, the Celts, the Normans, the Saxons. Britain was always a place made of other places. And even what we think of as “modern” immigration goes quite a long way back. Well over three hundred years ago, you had Indians who came here after being recruited on ships run by the East India Company. Then came Germans and Russian Jews and Africans. But it is true that, while immigration has always been a part of English society, for a long time visibly different immigrants were treated as exotic oddities . . . For instance, in the eighteenth century a man called Omai arrived here from the Pacific Islands. He arrived back on Cook’s second voyage . . .’ I pause. I remember sitting on the deck of the boat with him, Omai, my old friend, showing him my daughter’s coin and teaching him the word money. ‘And when Omai came here he was seen as so unique that every celebrity of the day, from the king down, went to meet him and have dinner with him . . .’ I remember his face, flickering in the shadow of a flame. ‘He even had his portrait painted by the most famous artist of the time, Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was a celebrity, for a time. Omai . . .’