You don’t know a book until you’re inside it. This, Julia has said to me many times. You cannot dip into a manuscript and know the book. You cannot read a passage here and a passage there. A book, unlike a painting, cannot be immediately apprehended. Unlike a meal, a book cannot be appreciated at the first mouthful. A book only unfurls itself across time.

But a book of poetry is different, Julia says. It is not like a painting, or a novel, or a meal, and yet, it isn’t a commitment of time either; it is not real estate (how poets wish it were!); nor does it have to survive in the memory alone. A poem can be taken in very quickly, says Julia, but it can last a lifetime. It can be gone back to, over and over again, and bring a different response each time. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Julia, ‘if only one image captures you. Or one line.’ She takes off her glasses and looks at me sternly. ‘We have forgotten how to read poetry, I think. We’re frightened by it.’

After pretending she was glad that I had no writerly aspirations, she decided, in the wake of Mother’s success, that she’d better just make sure she wasn’t missing an intergenerational talent. ‘Bring something to me, Owen,’ she said at the end of our first date. I had stood her up at Trades Hall but went sheepishly back to her office and told her I’d got the day wrong. I was temperamentally incapable of being cruel. ‘Bring me something. Let me see what you can write! I may not be able to publish it myself, of course, but if it’s any good, I can forward it on to the right people …’ She smiled. She was five years older than me. It seemed a lifetime.