‘Why have you got this sitting here?’ I pick it up. It looks and feels new, but it’s the exact edition from my childhood. ‘You read this to me in London, but not this copy, obviously. Even though it looks exactly like it.’

Night after night, Swallows and Amazons, Simon and me, whatever kind of day we’d had, whatever the weather. Dad in the city, caught up with work, Mum waiting and smoking, whatever. I would have my bath, and Simon would tuck me in and read me a chapter of Swallows and Amazons, and then I would sleep. He would go to his room for more homework and music, and the beat would come through the wall, I would slip into a dream of the Walker children in the Lake District and the world would be all right.

Before he can answer, a Book Depository receipt slips out. I read it without even meaning to. ‘May 26 last year . . .’

‘Um, yeah.’ He reaches for the book, then moves his hand back. ‘That was when you called me. With the news. The good news. I ordered it the second I got off the phone. I went online to get a copy, and it turned out they’d done a facsimile of that exact edition, the one we read. And then . . .’

‘Then the bad news.’

Lacy steps back and bumps the door frame. I reach out to put my hand on her side and the book shuts. The receipt flutters to the floor.

‘Yeah,’ Simon says. He moves from one foot to the other. ‘I was . . . I wanted to . . . to come to Alaska and read it to . . . whoever. My niece or nephew.’

Blood pumps to my face. There are bird sketches among the boats on the cover – ducks, wader birds, no swallows that I can see. I can picture him as if I’m watching from a doorway, Simon at fifty-something, lamplight on the open book and on his hands, reading, creating that world again.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hey, did you know Arthur Ransome married Trotsky’s secretary? He was right in with the Bolsheviks. He was at least a spy for MI5 or 6, maybe a double agent. And then, years later, he wrote this.’ He taps the book cover with his finger. ‘History – you like that shit now, right?’

‘Yeah,’ I tell him, when I’ve processed what he’s said. ‘Yeah, that’s good history. A spy or double agent. I didn’t know that.’

On our third attempt, we get through to Colleen’s phone to say goodnight to Cedar. They’ve been at the Denny’s across the road from Disneyland, along with everyone else from Disneyland, by Colleen’s estimate, so her phone buzzed away in her bag in the clamour.

Cedar recounts the highlights of his day on speaker at high speed. It comes out as one long sentence, ‘and then . . . and then . . . and then . . .’