Anna frowned. ‘Surely it’s still the holidays?’

Edith looked perturbed. ‘Yes, I suppose it is. They don’t seem to go home though . . .’

Olivia came back in with a beautifully laid tray of tea, including a plate of Indian sweets, bright with the red and green of cherries and pistachio.

‘A good job I took over from Sean,’ she said, ‘or you’d have had a teabag in a cup and a stale Rich Tea biscuit.’ She offered the plate of sweets to them, telling Anna, ‘These are a treat on Bengali afternoons. Edith comes to me once a week.’

Anna nibbled a square of pistachio barfi, feeling its thick, milky sweetness slide over her tongue.

‘Mostly, you see, I make my living from teaching music – and the lodgers, of course,’ Olivia said, as she poured tea with an almost exaggerated grace.

‘Does your son live with you?’ Anna asked.

‘Krishna?’ Olivia’s face took on a glow. ‘Yes, he’s home at last. He’s just done his first year at college in London and is having a simply marvellous time.’ Anna noticed that the sing-song quality had gone from Olivia’s voice. Instead it had become gushing. ‘He’s out at the moment. He has an old friend in Kings Heath who owns a very nice furniture shop. Krish has done bits of work for him sometimes and poor Jake’s marriage seems to have broken up so I think Krish is company for him. Krishna would cheer anyone up, wouldn’t he, Edith?’

Edith managed, ingeniously, through a mouthful of barfi, to adapt concerned cluckings over Jake’s marriage to noises of agreement and mirth concerning Krishna.

‘He’s doing his degree in anthropology,’ Olivia went on proudly. ‘And learning Bengali. He’s adoring it. Finding out about a culture that’s half his, after all. His father was from Calcutta, you see. I met him when I was studying in London myself after the war. He had a visiting lectureship.’ She related this in the tones of someone telling a fairy story. ‘I don’t make any secret of the fact that I’ve been a single parent – after all, it’s almost the mode nowadays. At first, though, I called myself Mrs, of course. It wasn’t the same at all in the early 1960s . . . It’s not at all easy bringing up a child by yourself – especially as my family couldn’t cope with what I’d done. But Krishna’s been the most wonderful child – I can hardly begin to tell you.’

Edith nodded enthusiastically. ‘He’s a lovely boy. And I’m sure you’ve been a tower of strength, Olivia.’

Olivia accepted this compliment graciously. ‘He’s the one who’s given me all the strength in the world. We keep in touch all the time when he’s away. We’re so close – sometimes it’s quite uncanny.’

Anna watched her, fascinated. Sitting nearer Olivia now, she could see the slackness of her skin, a truer indication of her age. But she found herself mesmerized by her vivacity, coupled with an apparent openness and vulnerability which took her quite by surprise.