Louis Robinson had been just about to leave Cannes for London when Gordon spoke to him. They arranged to meet and did so two days later. Louis offered Alison and Andrew this flat rent-free for as long as they wanted it.

“He apologized for its being on the top floor,” Alison said. “We were so grateful we didn’t care about things like that, we were just so happy to have a place of our own.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “It hasn’t been the most convenient option, though, has it? I mean, if he’d let us have the lower-ground floor, we’d have had the use of the garden for Jason. I suppose Robinson didn’t want the hassle of moving his furniture out.”

Alison seemed a bit embarrassed by this show of ingratitude. “We came here in March, a month after we left our own house. We’ve never seen Louis, he went back to France, and we’ve never seen the old people, I think they lead a very quiet life. Andrew’s seen the man on the ground floor, but he’s lucky, people don’t recognize him without his beard.”

Silver told her about the picture in the paper, the identikit, if that’s what it’s called, which showed a very passable likeness of Andrew as he now was.

“Maybe I should grow my beard again and fool them. After all, I’ve all the time in the world and I hardly ever go out. I won’t be able to go out at all now and no doubt we’ll starve to death.”

We’d shop for them, we said. We’d do their shopping, get anything they wanted and bring it in somehow. That reminded Andrew, he said, that he owed us for the wine and the chocolate and stuff, but Silver said that was a present, a token of goodwill. We’d get supplies for them tomorrow and they could pay us when we brought them. He told Alison to make a list, and while she was doing this, asked what their plans were for the future.

“You can’t stay here forever.”

“We know that. For one thing, Jason will have to go to school. At present we teach him ourselves. Alison’s a trained teacher and I’ve got a B.Ed. But he needs friends, people his own age. He needs to be in the open air and at the moment he never is.”