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and his Venus, of M Dronne, of the bunker and what I’d seen there. And then I told him about my recent trip, and about the margrave and about Marian. When I’d finished, I was very tired and it was very late. I’d drunk too much whisky and I felt on the verge of tears, but I didn’t want to cry, and especially not in front of Hunter.
    He listened without comment as I spoke, and nodded slowly when I’d finished. It was a relief just that he seemed to take me seriously, that he believed what I was saying, because I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.
    For once, he didn’t have much to say.
    ‘I was lucky not to have to fight,’ he said, quietly. ‘And you, you tried to help people, but you still saw more than anyone’s fair share of suffering, I suppose. Don’t punish yourself for that.’
    I didn’t answer, but smiled to show I was grateful to him.
    ‘You know, Charles, I’ve known you since you were a boy. A very bright boy, but a dreaming boy too. And now you are on the verge of being a brilliant doctor. But I wonder whether you are still too much of a fantasist to be a very good scientist.’
    ‘Maybe the best scientists are the biggest dreamers,’ I argued. ‘The ones able to think of something no one else has thought of before.’
    He inclined his head and I knew I’d won that point, but it was his subtext that bothered me more. It meant that perhaps he didn’t believe me after all.
    He stood and put a hand on my shoulder.
    I stood too. It was time to go.
    ‘And Marian?’
    ‘Marian sounds delightful from everything you’ve said, and I suspect that even if this man were to turn out to be some kind of criminal, she is nothing to do with it at all.’
    ‘What do you mean? “ If ”? You don’t believe me?’
    He held up his hand, shaking his head, and was clearly searching for the right words.
    ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is try not to worry. Get some sleep. Go home now.’
     
    I did. And I did feel better, because an hour with Hunter was like a confessional in some ways, and a holiday in others; you always came away feeling better, about both yourself and the world.
    And I did feel better, because for the rest of that night, and half the following day, I was able to believe the lie I’d told Hunter and so wanted to believe myself: that the girl was dead when I found her.

Chapter 13
     
    What is blood?
    Around the time of my visit to Paris, and Marian’s trip to England, there were many excellent men and women trying to answer that question, trying to understand its composition and its nature in order to better fight the diseases and disorders of the blood. For a while I was one of them, and yet I had an unspoken question at the back of my mind all that time, one that even now I can only formulate like this: why is blood?
    Why is it like it is, and what does it mean to us?
    In our modern world, I knew, bright colours are not so rare, but that is because we have synthetic dyes and pigments. Long ago, in those caves in France where the Venus of Bastennes and other figures like her were carved, bright colours must have seemed magical; most of the world was soft browns and greens. The strongest colours would have been the autumn leaves, the blue of the sky on a summer’s day, and even these would seem to have no permanence, for the leaf that is golden one day is on the ground the next, the sky that is blue one day can be grey the day after. There would be some brightly coloured berries and fruit, I suppose, too, but the one splash of colour that could always be relied on to amaze, to impress, to shock, maybe even to delight, would be blood. In every culture I knew of, red symbolised danger, presumably because of the link with blood; we are programmed to react to it, because that might save our life.
    And though more blood was perhaps spilled in those distant days, it must still have been a rare moment, and when blood was seen it would have been such a contrast to the