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"Tomorrow," I say. "In the morning light it’s…”

"I'm sure," he says.

"You'll see."

"I'm not doubting it." He looks at me. "I'm here."

The crew has a late dinner at the hotel restaurant — whoever wants to come. I text Anders: bringing Jan if that's okay. He replies: obviously.

The dinner is good. Jan orders correctly and within ten minutes is in a focused conversation with Priya that I cannot fully follow but which appears to be going well, judging by the fact that Priya is leaning forward and Jan has the expression he gets when he finds someone worth his attention. He asks Kemal one question about his routing exams and Kemal talks for twenty minutes, which Jan facilitates without appearing to facilitate it. Anders, halfway through the main course, catches my eye across the table and raises his glass slightly. I raise mine back.

Jan, beside me, has his hand on the table. I put mine over it.

He turns it over and holds mine back without looking up from his conversation.

At some point Priya glances at her phone and looks up with the expression of someone who has seen something and is deciding whether to say anything. She catches my eye. Doesn't say anything. Goes back to her conversation.

I don't think about it again.

I wake before Jan. The room is grey with the first light.

I get out of bed quietly and cross to the window. I open the curtains.

Behind me, the sheets move.

Jan sits up. He looks through the window and goes completely still.

Table Mountain fills the glass — enormous, unhurried, the flat top catching the morning light, the city below it still half in shadow. I have seen it eleven times. I watch Jan see it for the first time.

He doesn't say anything.

He gets out of bed and comes to stand beside me at the window. We stand there for a moment.

"You knew," he says.

"I requested the room."

He looks at the mountain. Then at me. The expression on his face is not complicated. It is the Jan version of overcome, which is: very still, very present, nothing managed about it.

He puts his hand on my arm. He doesn't say anything else.

We stand there until the light changes.

The morning is slow and good — breakfast on the hotel terrace, the mountain changing colour as the light moves, Jan with his face turned up to the sun, applying himself to the warmth with full attention. We walk the waterfront. He buys something at a market stall after examining it with more focus than it probably warrants. I decide not to ask. If I ask he'll explain it.

We take the cable car up in the afternoon.

The top. The edge. The vertigo of standing above a city you arrived in a day ago and feeling like you know it already because you're standing in it with the right person. Jan at the edge, looking at the Atlantic spread below us, and me with my hand on the small of his back because I put it there and it belongs there and I have stopped finding reasons not to.

"It's extraordinary," he says.

"Yeah," I say. I am not looking at the view.

He turns. Catches me. The expression on his face is the one I have come to think of as the Jan version of flustered — composed on the surface, something warmer underneath that he hasn't quite managed to contain. "Patrick."

"The view is extraordinary," I say. "I was agreeing."

"You weren't looking at it."