Relatives, noble families, lamas and government officials greeted the Prince with a variety of reactions that ranged through polite affection, restrained respect, simple friendliness and what certainly looked like unalloyed joy.  There were no great crowds of people brandishing the national flag and shouting hip-hurrah, but no cloaked anarchists lobbing bombs either.  People waved a lot and smiled.

We visited one hospital.  It was clean but sparse, just a building with many beds in many rooms, with little of the equipment the average Westerner associates with institutional medicine.  Suvinder took little presents for the patients.  I felt rudely healthy, as though my own constitution — which felt pretty sturdy and glowing — was an insult to these sick people.

We went round a couple of schools, too, which were much more fun.  We visited the yak market in Kamalu, saw a Hindu marriage near Gerrosakain and a Buddhist funeral in Khruhset.

We took short hikes into the hills to visit half-frozen waterfalls, abandoned forts, picturesquely ancient monasteries and picturesquely ancient monks.  In the lower valleys, we crossed the milky rush of rivers by open wicker-work tube bridges.  The Prince puffed and panted up the trails, using a couple of tall walking sticks, perspiring freely and apologising profusely for it, but he always made it and we never had to stop and wait for him.  Langtuhn carried whatever picnic or other stuff he thought we might need and wouldn't let me carry anything other than the pair of binoculars and the Canon Sureshot I'd bought in Joitem.

I was pleased to be able to keep up with Langtuhn, even though he was loaded down with all the gear, had ten years on me at least and — I suspected — was throttling his pace way back to make life easier for us.

It was on one of these walks I lost the little artificial flower Dulsung had given me.

Kkatjats were snacks.  We nibbled on a lot of Kkatjats.  Pancakes featured strongly.  Jherdu was roast millet flour, pi'kho roasted wheat flour.  I'd been studying my guidebook and knew words like pha for village, thakle for innkeeper, kug for crow, muhr for death, that sort of thing.  Some words were easy to remember because they bore a similarity to their English, Indian or Nepalese equivalents, like thay for tea, rupe which was the local currency, and namst, which was the everyday form of hello.

We stayed in two Thulahnese stately homes (one warm and unfriendly, the other the opposite), a government rest-house (minimalist; big rooms but a padded hammock, for goodness' sake.  Still, very good night's sleep), the Gerrosakain Grand Hotel, Guest, Tea and Bunk House (long on sign, short on grandness) and a monastery, where I had to sleep in a special annex hung out over the walls because I was female.

Somewhat to my surprise, and much to my relief, Suvinder was a perfect gentleman: no flirting, no hands on knees, no tappings on my door at midnight.  All in all it was a very restful and relaxing holiday in a pleasantly tiring sort of way.  I'd deliberately left my lap-top and both phones back in Thuhn (the ordinary mobile was totally useless here anyway).  It was like a sabbatical within a holiday within a sabbatical.  Or something.  Anyway, I felt very good.  I thought of Stephen a few times, and took out the two discs I had, the CD-ROM with the Business's plans for Thulahn and the DVD with the evidence of my beloved's spouse cheating on him, and held them up to whatever light was available and watched their rainbow surfaces shimmer for a while, before putting them both back in my pocket.

Maybe, I thought, everything will have changed when I get back to Thuhn and make a few calls and send a few e-mails.  Stephen will have found out about Emma's infidelity, she'll have taken the children and he'll be winging his way to Thulahn, To Forget.  The Business would have suddenly discovered somewhere even better to buy, but donate billions to Thulahn, just to say thanks.

Somehow being away from all electronic contact, even if only for a few days, made this seem much more likely, as though there was a capacitance for change and difference in my life which was constantly being shorted away to ground by all the calls I made and e-mails I exchanged, but which, left alone for a while and allowed to charge up fully, would, when finally released, blast through all problems and light up all and any darkness.

Well, hoping is always easier than thinking.

I stayed up talking to the Prince a couple of nights over a whisky or two.  He talked about the long-mooted change to becoming a constitutional monarch, about better roads, schools and hospitals, about his love for Paris and London, about his affection for Uncle Freddy, and about all the changes that would inevitably ensue if — and when, because he talked about it as though it was unavoidable — the Business came in and took over his country.

'It is a Mephistophelean thing, what?' he said sadly, staring into the flames of the rest-house's sitting-room fire.  Everybody else had turned in for the night; there were just the two of us and a decanter of something peaty from Islay.

'Well,' I said, 'if you were thinking about this constitutional monarchy thing anyway, you aren't losing so much.  Maybe, in some ways, you gain.  The Business will probably prefer to deal with a single ruler than a chamber full of politicians, so remaining…' (I tried to think of a polite alternative to the word that had first occurred to me, but it had been a long day and I was tired, so I couldn't) '… undemocratic for as long as possible will suit them fine.  And any pressure for reform, well, they'll just buy that off with improvements if not outright bribes.  You should look on it as securing your position, Suvinder.'

'I did not mean for me, Kathryn,' he said, swirling his whisky round in his glass. 'I meant for the country, the people.'

'Oh.  I see.' Boy, did I feel shallow. 'You mean they don't get a say in whether all this happens.'

'Yes.  And I can't really tell them what it is that might happen.'

'Who does know?'

'The cabinet.  Rinpoche Beies has a sort of idea, and my mother managed to get wind of it too, somehow.'

'What do they all think?'

'My ministers are enthusiastic.  The Rinpoche is…hmm, indifferent is not the correct word.  Happy either way.  Yes.  My mother has only the vaguest notion, but despises the whole idea utterly.' He sighed heavily. 'I thought she would.'

'Well, she's a mother.  She just wants what's best for her boy.'

'Huh!' The Prince drained his glass.  He inspected it as though surprised to find it empty. 'I am going to have some more whisky,' he announced. 'Would you like to have some more whisky, Kathryn?'

'Just a little.  Very little…That's too much.  Never mind.'

'I think she blames me,' he said morosely.

'Your mother?  What for?'

'Everything.'

'Everything?'

'Everything.'

'What, like the Second World War, toxic shock syndrome, TV evangelists, the single "Achey Breakey Heart"?'

'Ha, but no.  Just for not having remarried.'

'Ah.' We hadn't — ever — touched on the subject of the Prince's short-lived marriage to the Nepali princess who'd died in the helicopter crash in the mountains, twenty years earlier. 'Well, one has to mourn,' I said.  'And then these things take time.' Platitudes, I thought.  But this was the sort of thing you felt. you had to say.  I read once that Ludwig Wittgenstein had no small-talk, no casual conversation at all.  How hellish.

Suvinder gazed at the flames.  'I was waiting to meet the right person,' the Prince told them.

'Well, hell, Prince.  Your mother can't blame you for that.'

'I think mothers have their own idea of original sin, to use the Christian term, Kathryn,' Suvinder said with a sigh. 'One is always guilty.' He glanced round towards the door.  'Always I wait for her to come through the door.  Any door, whenever I am in Thulahn, and sometimes when I am further afield, scolding me.'