‘I went to boarding school,’ he tells her. ‘Sent away when I was twelve. For the first few years I was desperately unhappy but I felt I couldn’t show it. That it would be letting my parents down. It was a good school and they’d sacrificed so much to send me there. How could I tell them I was unhappy?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I kept my head down and got on with it. And by the end, I was happy enough.’ He smiles at her with sympathy. ‘Not always easy, is it?’

‘No,’ she says, in that quiet, cautious manner, her eyes sliding back towards the mantelpiece.

‘Who’s this?’ she asks, plucking a photograph of Cassandra from behind one of the candlesticks.

‘My daughter,’ he tells her. ‘One of her baby snaps.’

‘She’s cute,’ Leah says, and he nods.

‘Lives in Australia now. She’s a nurse, I believe.’

‘You believe?’

He shrugs, looks down bashfully. ‘I’m afraid my Cassandra is not one for keeping in touch with her old man.’

When he looks up, she is giving him a thoughtful stare, as if considering whether or not to press him on the subject. Then, as if deeming it too delicate, she says: ‘Cassandra. That’s an unusual name.’

‘After the Trojan princess. Actually, when she was born, I wanted to call her Iphigenia, but Charlotte would have none of that.’

Her smile is quizzical, confused, so he explains: ‘Iphigenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra. She appears as the Greeks prepare for war with Troy. A sacred deer, accidentally killed, enrages the goddess Artemis, who demands that Agamemnon sacrifice Iphigenia to make amends.’

‘And does he?’

‘In some accounts, yes, to the abiding murderous rage of her mother. In other accounts, she is spared and becomes the goddess Hecate. Others again report her to survive and be awarded in marriage to the great hero, Achilles.’

‘Quite different fates,’ she remarks, ‘depending on which is true.’

‘Which you believe,’ he corrects her. ‘So often in life, everything hangs on what you choose to believe.’

He has spoken with too much conviction, allowing his personal feelings to creep into his voice. Now is not the time, he thinks. Instead, he brightens, and says: ‘So, the nocturnes?’

He pulls back the dividing doors, hears the clunk and roll of the ancient mechanism creaking to life, and reveals the front room, with its marble fireplace, the walnut dining-table and chairs, the glazed bookcases with their antique volumes bound in leather and, in the bay window, the piano.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ she says, with genuine feeling, and she moves past him into the room, her eyes fixed on the instrument.