Long after Sally was too old to improvise role-play games to help him sleep, James was still making the Edinburgh trips with his father – once a year, either in summer or at Christmas. By booking in advance, James always secured first class – something Dad commented on every time, since he’d gone the first sixty years of his life without ever getting into what he called ‘the Rolls-Royce area’. The two of them would sit at their table with books; in the quiet space that this created, they conducted some of their most successful conversations. Many of the key changes in James’s life were revealed to Mr Chiltern on those five-hour journeys.

‘So, yes, I’ve started work as a … a driver.’

‘A cabbie?’ Dad’s eyes were still on his annual Bill Bryson, but his eyebrows – thick and black, like his hair – twitched in interest.

‘Not a cabbie exactly; private hire. You have to book us in advance.’ James said this proudly. Sometimes on Saturday nights, when people flung themselves at the locked doors, he took a certain satisfaction in pointing to the driver’s side window, below which it said PRIVATE HIRE ONLY. It wasn’t a foolproof way of communicating with people who had had fifteen Sambucas, but he liked the passenger to feel safe.

‘That sounds fun,’ said Mr Chiltern, the same thing he said about almost any new proposition that wasn’t signing up for a war. ‘And how did you get into that?’ James replied by talking about how he’d helped someone get to hospital in an emergency recently and realized that driving could be a good way of meeting people and making himself useful. He spared his father the details, the drama. Mr Chiltern, glancing up from the Bill Bryson, nodded approvingly and said that perhaps James could drive them up to Scotland one of these years. Both of them knew they didn’t really want that; the train was part of the ritual.

A couple of years later, Dad became the first of the family to hear about Michaela. ‘I think I’m … well. In love with her,’ said James, aware that he would never be able to come out with this sentence if the cover of Bryson’s Australian travelogue hadn’t put up a little wall between them. Dad clapped his hands together softly, almost unnoticeably. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Your mother has high hopes for this Michaela. I mean, both of us do,’ he added after a few moments, rubbing his hair. ‘But she’s the one who tends to have the stronger opinions, as we know.’

‘What – what does she think of Sally … Sal marrying Declan?’ James found he was able to ask.

Dad nodded at the page as if the verdict on his daughter’s fiancé was to be found there. ‘Solid chap, very sporty. Seems to care for her. But Australia is an awfully long way away. That’s one of Mr Bryson’s insights.’