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His mother says something in Czech. Jan answers, quietly. She says something else, looking at me, and then she gets up to bring more food. Jan translates: "She says you have a good face."

"Tell her thank you," I say.

He tells her. She laughs, and pats my shoulder as she passes.

I look at Jan.

He is looking at me with something in his face that I will carry with me for a long time. Something open and undefended and slightly overwhelmed.

"Okay?" I say, quietly.

He nods. Once. Not a small nod.

After lunch Jan's father suggests a walk.

He takes us through the old city — the castle on the hill, the market square, the particular streets of Brno in October, the light lower and the trees turning. Jan's father is different outside than at the table — more expansive, more at ease, pointing at things and explaining them. Jan's mother walks beside me and asks questions about Amsterdam, about flying, about the channel. Her English is careful and good and she uses it with the focused determination of someone who has been practising.

At some point she says, with the complete directness of a woman who has decided to say what she is thinking: "Jan didn't tell me you were so handsome."

Jan, ahead of us, does not turn around.

"He mentioned it was not relevant information," I say.

She laughs… the real laugh, the good one. "It is a little relevant," she says. "A mother notices."

"I'll tell him you said so," I say.

"He will be embarrassed," she says.

"Yes," I say. "That's why I'll tell him."

She laughs again and squeezes my arm briefly and we walk through Brno in the October afternoon and I think about what Jan said it won't be the Haarlem lunch, and think: he was wrong. Not the same. But warm. Genuinely warm. The warmth of people who have been waiting for their son to bring someone home and are finding, with some relief, that the someone is this.

Jan's father points at the castle on the hill. "Jan was obsessed with it as a boy," he says. "Every Saturday." He smiles at Jan. "We could never keep him away from it."

Jan looks up at the castle. Something in his face — quiet, private, the face of someone looking at something that belonged to an earlier version of themselves.

"It helped," Jan says. Simply. To the castle, not to us.

His father nods. We keep walking.

We leave his parents in the early evening. Jan's mother hugs him at the door — longer than a normal hug, the kind that says something without saying it. Then she turns to me and says something in Czech, patting my face with both hands briefly, and kisses my cheek.

"We'll see you tomorrow," Jan's father says. He has already suggested a place for lunch on Saturday, a restaurant in the old town he thinks we might like. There was no question in it. Just: Saturday, lunch, this place.

I look at Jan.

He nods at his father. "Saturday," he says.

We walk to the hotel. Jan is quiet.

At some point I say: "She said something to you. At the door."

He walks for a moment.

"She said: he's good," he says. "In Czech. She said it quietly, just for me."

I look at him.