‘Yes. Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ She takes the sleeve carefully from me and sets it back on the shelf. ‘Imagine the excitement when she opens it. It’s not every day I sell – or buy – a piece like this. I have many more Latin Bible leaves I acquired for twenty or thirty dollars a time and they come up well in a frame, but not with that history. People buy them for spiritual occasions, ordinations and the like, pastors retiring. Or simply for devout people, if a particular verse means something to them. Some leaves do better than others. I’d never run out of buyers for John 3:16. Some of the pages are clean, some have notes in the margins. Some people like that, but it only adds value if you can link it with someone, which is virtually never. I had one folio of leaves by Anton Koberger – from The Book of Psalms – full of underlinings and marginal notes. Some of them were musical tempos. A link to a famous musician would have been nice, but you can’t have everything. But I’m taking up far too much of your time with my prattling. It’s Sunday, a family day. I’m sure you have things to do, and I have’ – she puts on a glum face – ‘packing to confront.’ She glares at the mess on the floor.

‘There’s no hurry,’ I tell her. ‘I could at least make up some boxes.’ Lacy is very likely still asleep. There are no lessons on Sundays. Cedar is at a friend’s and not due home for close to an hour. ‘I’d be happy to.’

‘Oh, that’s above and beyond,’ she says, with a mock-stern look, which she holds for a second. It’s a chance to retract my offer. ‘But I would appreciate it. And then there’s this awful packing task. What to keep? What to sell? What to finally accept is junk and just let go?’

‘I guess packing’s one of those times when a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’ She’s not paying me for clichés, or second-hand quotes from Chinese philosophers, but it’s still true.

‘There’s way more of those in life than anyone ever tells you,’ she says. ‘Am I right?’

It might be rhetorical, it might not. The thought kicks around in my head. Yes, yes, for better or worse, yes. The world outside blows in in a gust. There was a baby, I want to tell her, and now there’s not. We were better off in the past, deep in the past with Caxton and the broken Bibles. I’ve kept that journey quote near the surface these past few months, enough that some days I count steps without meaning to, one foot in front of the other.

‘I took the wrong first step,’ she says, the quote still in her head too. ‘After you left yesterday I thought I should begin decluttering, and I opened a box of Walter’s things. I can’t keep them all, but . . .’ She shrugs.