“And you are much too old for her.”

“Oh,” he replied. “Too old for what?”

“You know yourself.”

“I get the implication, but you’re wrong.”

“So that was not you,” she answered self-righteously, “sitting outside our house night after night in the car?”

“Not me, unfortunately.”

“Are you sure?” she asked incredulously.

“I am,” he answered. “I think you have the wrong man.”

They sat in silence while she recalled all her perverse imaginings and he laced a shoe that did not need lacing.

“It’s extraordinary,” she suddenly said.

“The whole thing is a wonder,” agreed Jack. He shook his head, brought up his bottom lip and attempted an unexpected, friendly smile. “I hardly know Sara. All I did was teach her to drive.”

“Then why do you still call?”

“Because I know so few.” He acknowledged the shelf behind her with a nod. “You have a sight of books.”

“They were my father’s,” she replied absent-mindedly.

He looked at her. She gave him the same candid, interested glance. “I was just passing,” he explained.

“What do you do anyway?” she asked.

“I do a spot of writing. And I fish here for the summer on the boats.”

This made her pause. “Writing,” she said disbelievingly. “What sort of writing?”

“Plays, I’m interested in plays.”

“What kind?”

“I pen songs of the buck. Billy tunes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Goat songs.”

“Is that so?”

“That’d be the height of it.”

Catherine looked at him. “That’s all very interesting. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tragedies. Tragos – goat. Oide – song. From the Greek.”

“I never knew that.”

“There you go. Every time you weep in the theatre you’re listening to a goat singing.”

“You jest.”

“Not at all. In the early days the Greek goatherds used to put the bucks on one island and the nannies on another. Then when the nannies were on heat their smell would come on the breeze to the bucks who rose a mournful cry.”

“The poor things.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“And why didn’t they just jump in the water and swim across, if they were so frustrated?”

“Ah, but that’s the crux of the matter,” said Jack Ferris. “You see, goats can’t swim.”

Suddenly, there was a loud crash against the door and a low whine. “Be God,” said Jack Ferris. “That’s me dog.”

“Well, bring him in.”

“Are you serious?” He watched her carefully as he ushered in a tangerine shepherd dog, which immediately rushed under the seat Jack sat on and looked out at Catherine through his master’s legs.

“I’ve no luck with dogs. This one is a pup I bought from a home. He’s called” – he looked down at the quivering snout of the animal – “he’s called, to his great grief, Daisy, aren’t you?”