‘Good job,’ she says, and makes me feel like the best student in the room. ‘Excellent deductive skills. Did you know this was your thing? And here’s the value-add from Walter and me. It’s an assignat. The French National Assembly started issuing them as bonds and, in 1790, made them currency. But then the citizens got the idea they might be worth nothing if the republic collapsed, so the assignats lost value. Along came war in Europe, and they lost more value. So, in 1796, they were replaced. In 1797, France went back to coins. Ebay is awash with assignats. Sometimes I wonder if the French did nothing in the early 1790s but chop each other’s heads off and print money. Five dollars they sell for sometimes, there’s so many of them. This is excellent quality, so maybe thirty. But they make a great gift framed for a class wanting to thank their French teacher, with the story on the back.’

She makes a space in the box and slides the sleeves back in among dozens of others.

‘Walter missed teaching history when they made him principal of South Anchorage High,’ she says, looking down at her sheaf of sleeves. Cedar will go to South Anchorage in ninth grade, more than likely. ‘It was something of a scandal when we got together. That was in Maine, where his family were senators. We taught at the same school then too. He was head of department. It shouldn’t have been a scandal, but it was. So, we decided on a fresh start.’ She rifles through the sleeves and straightens them before putting the lid back on. ‘And we were history teachers, so we did it the historical way. We fled to the frontier. That was our adventure. If teaching history somewhere different is any kind of adventure. It felt bold at the time.’

She smiles at the thought of it, picks the box up and returns it to its place on the shelf.

I’m about to ask what’s in the other boxes when she says, ‘Walter was in his mid-fifties when we met and I had just turned forty and thought I would never marry. I had told myself I would be content with that. Back in those days, the eighties, they said a woman single at forty had as much chance of being struck by lightning as marrying. It was a lie, of course, but no less mean-spirited for not being true. Then, just as I had realised marriage truly wasn’t everything, along came Walter.’

She stops, takes a sharp breath in and cuts it off as quickly as she can. For several minutes there, Walter wasn’t gone at all. My hand starts to reach towards her arm, but I stop it and pull it back to my side.