I start to laugh, and he gives me a wry smile, a strand of silky hair falling over his forehead. He stands up and wanders over to the stereo to replace the record. “All My Love” by Led Zeppelin comes on.

“I love this song,” he says, settling back onto the sofa and retrieving his glass.

“I was never a Led Zeppelin fan, but I like this one.”

“I first smoked dope when listening to this,” he says in a nostalgic tone.

“You and twenty billion others, Mags. Did your parents catch you? Mine did when I was smoking it with Lennie. We were grounded for three months.”

“That’s quite harsh. Were they very anti-drug?”

“Have you met my stepfather? He’s anti everything that brings joy.” He laughs, and I carry on. “No, it wasn’t so much the drug as the fact that when they caught Lennie and me, I threw the joint away in a panic, and it set fire to the garden shed.”

He coughs over his drink and breaks into deep raucous laughter. “That is rather unfortunate. In direct contrast, my mother would have been thrilled with you. She was always very worried that I was too bourgeois and law-abiding.”

“So, no getting caught by your parents. Excellent.”

He shoots me a confused look. “No. They smoked it with me.”

I’m shocked, and I don’t know why. Everything about his childhood sounds so uber-bohemian that it would send other bohemians off to church clutching their pearls.

I wonder how he must’ve felt when he was transplanted to a strange country to live with a parent who was probably more of a stranger than a father.

For a few moments I consider his relaxed, but powerful, demeanour. He’d probably been the same as a child and took it all in his stride. No one would dare bully Mags. He has a very impervious air to him. An attitude of doing what he wants and damning the consequences and not giving a shit about other people’s opinions. Those sort of people are tough to cow.

He smiles at me wickedly, and I shove him. It’s a gentle push, but my fingers register the heat of his skin underneath the thin material of his shirt. I curl the traitorous digits into a fist. “Okay. We’ve covered childhood and music and—”

“Hold on. We haven’t covered yours, Laurie. We’d better do that because it’s patently obvious that I never listened to Lennie’s stories and now I’m afraid she might test me on the subject of the Gentry family.” I laugh and he twists to face me. “How did you end up with the judge for a parent?”

“Bad luck,” I offer, and he chuckles. I throw my drink back and wince. “Not really. He loves my mum, and he took all of us children on.”