‘Nightingale sent her,’ I said, watching as he buttered his toast with painful slowness. I was tempted to do it for him, but I didn’t think he’d like that.

‘Things must have changed back at the Folly,’ he said and, toast finally buttered, he lifted the lid on a little white china pot and scooped out some orange marmalade. ‘Still, the Nightingale was always a little bit unorthodox in his friends. There used to be this creature, slip of a thing, worked below stairs – never spoke.’ He paused looking for the name.

‘Molly?’

‘Yes, that was her name,’ said Hugh. ‘Molly. Used to terrify all us New Bugs, but not the Nightingale.’ Hugh smiled. ‘There were rumours, of course,’ he said. ‘It was scandalous.’

He bit decisively into his toast.

‘Why does everyone call him the Nightingale?’ I asked.

Hugh chewed industriously for a moment, swallowed and caught his breath.

‘Because he was so singular, so extraordinary – or so the seniors said. Of course most of us didn’t believe a word of it, but we used it as a nickname – irony, or so we thought.’

He was looking in my direction, but his gaze was somewhere back in time to his young self. My dad does the same thing when he talks about seeing Freddie Hubbard with Tubby Hayes at the Bull’s Head in 1965 or being at Ronnie Scott’s and hearing Sonny Rollins solo live for the first time.

There were so many questions I wanted answered, but I began to fear that he was drifting off – or worse.

‘You should have seen him at Ettersberg,’ he said softly. ‘It was like standing before the walls of Troy. Aías d’amphì Menoitiádei sákos eurù kalúpsas hestékei hós tís te léon perì hoîsi tékessin, but Ajax covered the son of Menoitios with his broad shield and stood fast, like a lion over its children.’

He grew quiet again, and I saw that I’d worn him out and utterly failed to get the information I’d wanted. Lesley would have been well pissed off with me for that.

Children are missing, she would have said, and you’re sitting around talking ancient history.

‘I was going to ask you about local magic and folklore,’ I said.

Hugh was obviously relieved to change the subject, because he brightened right up.

‘I may have just the thing,’ he said.