Heathrow is the setting for Myfanwy’s rushed preparations to meet Lisa Constanopoulos and for their first encounter. Its private reception room offers a secluded threshold into the novel’s wider supernatural world: amid the airport’s formal arrangements, an ancient and eccentric visitor arrives on her own time and overturns Myfanwy’s expectations.

Preparations at the Airport

When Myfanwy learns that a woman described only as a Greek woman thousands of years old is due to arrive at Heathrow, the description is not enough to identify her. Ingrid obtains the woman’s name and arrival time from Gubbins’s secretary, discovering that the plane is expected in half an hour. With that little notice, the assistants assemble two limousines, drivers, an itinerary for a day of entertainment, and Myfanwy’s honor guard, Anthony.

On the drive through traffic, Myfanwy asks Ingrid who the visitor is. Ingrid has files spread across Myfanwy’s lap and uses a long strip of paper, held by Anthony, to illustrate the woman’s timeline. The cramped, improvised briefing makes Heathrow the starting point for an encounter that demands historical context as well as ordinary reception logistics.

The Waiting Room and the Late Arrival

As Myfanwy and Ingrid hurry through the airport, Ingrid supplies a sampling of the woman’s extraordinary history: she was a close friend of Eva Perón, was briefly implicated in the Great Fire of Chicago, may possess a quail that lays golden eggs, and is responsible for four earthquakes over two centuries. They are taken to the special reception room reserved for important visitors, a luxurious, private space where guests can avoid Customs and the public.

The visitor does not arrive promptly. Although the party reaches the room half an hour after the plane lands, Lisa Constanopoulos comes in later still, while Ingrid is describing the three modern cults devoted to her. The delay makes the reception a small exercise in power: a woman with apparently unlimited time can leave her hosts waiting and make her entrance on her own terms.

First Impressions

Myfanwy has expected a glorious beauty who carries the dignity and confidence of the ages, befitting someone who has bargained with lamas and dueled with a pope. Instead, Lisa appears in conspicuously modern finery: she has come from Milan with designer clothes and lovers, wearing a bouffant of peroxide-blond hair, blood-red lipstick, massive sunglasses, and long crimson fingernails. A cigarette is in one hand; her arm is looped through that of an Adonis-like companion, while an elderly woman and a large Australian Aboriginal man follow behind.

The contrast between the airport’s polished private room and Lisa’s deliberately flamboyant appearance sharpens the gap between legend and person. Heathrow is not merely a point of arrival: it is where Myfanwy’s secondhand historical dossier gives way to a vivid, disconcerting first impression of the woman herself.