‘You’ve got to watch for that,’ my mother said.

‘Watch for what?’ I put my toast down. My knuckle caught the edge of the plate and made it clatter against the tabletop. ‘Theatre breaking out when I least expect it?’

‘Watch for his lack of wrist strength.’ My father held up his hand as if he was about to take an oath, then let it flop at the wrist. ‘Could be some limpness there.’

My mother laughed.

My father blew his smoke sideways, away from my toast. I wanted to be in George’s pool right then, to just stick my head under and not hear anything.

My mother got up, opened the fridge and took out a bottle of orange juice.

‘Is that the gourmet dinner I missed?’ my father said. It was on the top shelf, in a deep glass casserole dish. ‘It looks great. How will it reheat, do you think? Could I take it to work and reheat it for lunch?’

‘You could,’ she said. ‘Probably. I’ll put it in some Tupperware.’

We arranged the first swim for the following Saturday and, when I knocked on his front door, George Lascelles opened it wearing ancient neck-to-knee bathers under a fluffy robe with a G on the pocket. The robe was cream, and the black-and-white horizontal stripes on the chest of the bathers made him seem like a 1920s photograph.

‘You look as if you’re in some sort of squad,’ he said, pointing to my Adidas tracksuit, which was red, with three white stripes down each sleeve and leg. ‘Very sporty. Come in, come in.’

His house had a tiled entrance foyer with a cloakroom to one side, a staircase to the second floor with a grandfather clock on the landing, and a hallway leading to the other downstairs rooms. The walls were painted off-white, but the space still managed to be dark and cold. There was enough light for me to see details on the framed posters he had hung there, but only just.

‘My Empires,’ he said, as though empires weren’t much. ‘I own some theatres. Reading, Guildford, Swindon, Wycombe.’ He pointed out each one.

I had a sense of the places, towns not far away, commuter belt or beyond, but I’d never been to any of them. There had been an IRA bomb in Guildford, and The Jam, Status Quo and Patti Smith had played at the Reading Festival in August. I’d heard about that at school.

I asked him if he owned the Empire in Leicester Square and he said, ‘No, sadly. Though if I did it would be a theatre, rather than a cinema and a discotheque. Nor do I own the Hackney Empire, but that’s because I have no interest in bingo. You can see what I’m about.’

He tapped the Guildford poster, which was promoting a D’Oyly Carte touring production of HMS Pinafore, featuring stars I didn’t recognise. Next to it was a Reading Empire poster for a panto, Dick Wittington and His Cat.