She does a weird harrumph and shrugs really big like she’s trying to be flippant when I know she supremely does care what the boat is called.

“I mean, naming your yacht after your mother. Is that the done thing, I wonder?” And she actually looks at me, for, like, boat-naming etiquette rules. “Naming your yacht after your sweetheart is far more de rigueur. Only, I never did have a nickname, and Maude simply won’t do. But you’ll think something up, with that magic you do.”

She gestures toward my face, nearly touching her fingers to the underside of my chin, and pulls a long pink smile across her powder-white face.

One night after I’d been working on Mrs. Tyburn’s archive for a couple of weeks she called me downstairs. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, and a box of letters beside her. “I’m popping out to see Rose about ordering some things. Would you take care of these? I might be some time; lock up when you’re through, will you?” The letters were from someone called Jenny, all addressed to Mr. Tyburn. I only read one or two, enough to be sure they were definitely not from his mother.

So now the first thing I’ve got to do is come up with the nickname she supposedly got from her husband. I decide not to think too hard about it. I Google “yuppie nickname dictionary” and make a list: Topsy, Sooze, Peaches, Mimi, Mitzi, Miffi, Bitsy, Buffy, Bunny. Bunny is a classic, but maybe a bit too stripper these days. Buffy has too many goth connotations, but would Mrs. Tyburn know that? Mimi could work. There’s not so much of a leap between Maude and Mimi, but Mimi’s also the name of a lady she plays bridge with, and because Mimi always wins Mrs. T is sure she cheats. “Strictly entre nous.” And then it comes to me, and I know just what to do.

I rewind the film and set up the digital camera on a tripod just below the lens, run a cable from the camera into the computer, and start up Premiere. I set the pixel ratio to 4:3, recording at twenty-four frames per second. The trick to getting the digital copy to look right is to record the image at the same speed it’s transmitted. Then I need darkness. I turn off the monitor and cover the standby light with electrical tape, snap the blackout curtains down against the wall so that absolutely no light gets in, wipe the lens super carefully with a special slippery black cloth, flick the light off, and start the film. For the first few seconds it’s as dark as it was just before the world started. Just a buzzing noise of something about to happen.