That in itself a big difference.

Sometimes, admittedly, it is in the things you know best that you are the last to notice change. If I had had the signs pointed out to me earlier – the turning of a shoulder, the hush when I walked into a room, the hardening of smiles – perhaps I would have lasted longer.

Perhaps not a great politician after all.

Yet, would I have done things differently? Indeed, could I have done things differently? The townspeople, like dogs, followed my commands faithfully. Like curs they followed me because I led, because I showed them the way. I showed them how to live, how to survive. They came from everywhere and nowhere with nothing to live for, until they found someone to lead them out of the darkness and into a brave new world.

Because I showed them how to live they did not mind killing for me, because it was not killing for me, it was for them. And they were not stupid. Each and every one knew what he was doing. It was I who was stupid. I had not reckoned with the luxury of guilt. Once survival is ensured, guilt sets in. Only once survival is ensured can guilt set in.

And guilt motivates change. My fault. Not a very good politician at all.

Still, I love this town, these people. They have been my life too. I bear them no grudge.

The rain does not last for long. The sun comes out again. Steam begins to rise from the tops of the houses.

I breathe deeply. It has been a strange reception, perhaps even a slight setback but I am home and I am not hanging from the end of a rope. I put my arm around Andalus and squeeze his shoulders. He looks surprised.

I am hungry, not having eaten since a couple of oranges last night. I decide to try to find the old kitchens. I have no card or ration allocation and will have to gamble on the compassion of the cook. There is an additional reason for going to the kitchens of course. I hope to find Tora there.

As I walk the streets, I find myself scanning faces, searching for one familiar, searching for the brown curls hanging to her shoulders, the slim waist, the purposeful stride. I believe I would know her even if I could not see her face, even if, as in some children’s story, she has grown faceless. She is ingrained in me. I try to picture her face but I cannot. I could remember her on the island but here, where I am closer, it has gone. Her face was as familiar as my own but that too I cannot picture clearly, having not seen it in anything other than a pool of water for ten years. But I know her walk, the gait, the way of tossing her head so the curls would not hang over her eyes. I remember the eyes too, if not her whole face. I remember the smile. Her smile. It was never complete, never completely joyous but it had a power over me. I kept looking for it all those years I was with her, kept looking for the creases at the corner of her mouth, the one dimple, the shy look away from me when she did smile. All that I can remember but not her face.

Her smile was an obsession for me. It was something she held over me, whether on purpose I do not know. If I could not see it on one visit I nervously awaited the next and the next. Away from her I was a leader of men, with her, a boy.

There are more people out now but still I have not seen anyone I recognise and still I am not acknowledged. I cannot understand why this is. It is not possible for people to have forgotten.

I am a foreigner in my town. It is as if I am in my own home but after someone has come in and rearranged the furniture and upstairs in the bedroom is a woman asleep whom I have never seen before.

I do not have to walk very far to the kitchens. All the main buildings are very central. I wanted them arranged, as far as possible, close to the centre and close to the town hall. My own herding instinct I suppose.

I round a corner and there it is. It hasn’t changed at all. I can smell cooking even standing fifty metres away. I stand for a minute longer.

Though I am hungry, I know that this is the time Tora used to work. I think what to say. I decide not to plan the exact words. I decide to let her say the first words. I walk up to the building but do not go inside.

I walk around it, looking in the windows. Inside I can see benches and a few people sitting. There are women moving amongst them carrying platters of food and mugs of liquid. Very different to how it used to be done.

Some of the faces are familiar but again, there is no one whose name I know. And there is no sign of Tora. I do not know whether I am relieved or disappointed. Even if nothing else comes of this trip, for me to have seen her again is important. Yet, what will be behind the door if I open it? I have had years to forget her. I do not want to have to do it again. But I know I will seek her out. Indeed, if I am honest with myself, it is one of the main reasons I am back: to find the woman I love, to talk with her a while, to ask her questions, questions whose answers I have sought now for ten years. Perhaps to try to fix something broken, something that took up years of my life.

I push the door open and step inside with Andalus. I expect a silence to fall as I walk in but it does not. No one looks up from their meal. No one looks at all, except one of the serving women.

Behind the counter at the far end I see her looking at me. I don’t know what to do, whether the procedures are the same. I wonder whether I should confidently sit down and wait to be given food, whether I should explain at the outset why I might not be on the list of people to be given food, or whether I should simply wait here until someone comes to take me to a seat. In my day one formed a queue, had one’s name ticked off in a register, sat down at one of the long wooden benches and was given food. But there is no food queue here.

Suddenly the woman is in front of me.

‘Hello,’ she says. She smiles.

‘Would you like to sit?’ She points to an empty table. She looks at me but not at Andalus. It has been a while but the rituals come back to me now. The welcoming smile to a stranger, not an invitation but not a rebuttal either.

‘Thank you,’ I say. I sit down and she moves off. There are not many people in here. We are at a large table on our own. Two men are seated at the table on my left and are engaged in deep conversation. To my right are a woman and her child. She is feeding her. The child does not take her eyes off me.

I listen in on the conversation on my left. It is about nothing remarkable – weather and the harvest – on the surface at least. But these men seem to be expecting a plentiful crop and are arguing about the best way to trellis vines. This is the interesting aspect of it. The last time I was here there was only one way to trellis vines since we cared about quantity of fruit and nothing else. They argue about how growing methods affect the taste of the fruit.

I am pleased, proud in fact. The regulations I put into place, the strict laws, seem to have served their purpose. Rationing and farming controls and supervision, I am beginning to realise, are falling away, seemingly in response to improved production and increased quantity of food. My rules have rescued the settlement from starvation. It was a process you could see happening in my days as Marshal but I am surprised at how far it seems to have come, the fields of corn and wheat, the orange orchard and now this talk of abundant harvests of grapes.

Their conversation stops. They wait a few seconds before beginning another topic. I surmise they do not know each other very well.

I interrupt them. ‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Your conversation about vines.

I have been away for some time. When did you start caring about trellising?’

‘What do you mean?’ They answer me abruptly.

‘Ten years ago we only grew vines one way.’

‘We weren’t here ten years ago. He has been here seven years, me five.’