‘I think so,’ I said, looking at the bare rack where my clothes should have hung, and then to my bed, where they’d migrated, gradually, to form a shabby heap on its unoccupied side.

‘I mean, appropriate,’ Ian said, a smile in his voice. ‘Nothing too tight or short. Nothing – what’s the word? – sheer.’

‘Whatever you want,’ I said.

On the day of our first dinner Ian phoned me.

‘Susie,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you might do me a favour.’

‘Sure.’

‘Would you be able to drive tonight?’

I was relieved that I had a ready answer. ‘I would – but I don’t have a car.’ I barely had a bus ticket.

‘We can take my car,’ he said. He moved some sputum up from his throat. ‘You remember our address?’

How many times as a teenager, waxy headphones plugged into my ears, had I taken the two separate buses to arrive at Joanna’s place? How many afternoons had I whiled away in that sprawling house, or waist-deep in the swimming pool in the backyard?

Of course I remembered.

As soon as Ian answered the door, I could tell something was wrong.

‘Come in,’ he said. I followed him down the hallway. He was ginger on his feet, limping, hoisting his elbows with each step as though he could lift the pain out of his body.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked. ‘We can cancel.’

‘I’m fine. But you’ll have to bear with me.’

I looked around. I hadn’t been to the house since Joanna had moved out to live in a college on campus. But the place hadn’t changed. The piano was still there in the living room, along with the leather lounge suite and the family photos on the wall: all four Mortons against a cloudy blue background.

I had chosen to wear what I thought was the most appropriate of my dresses – navy wool, boat-necked, knee-length, a garment that I thought was beyond reproach. But Ian looked it over with a cool expression.

He reached out and pinched a loose thread between his fingers, twisted it, then let it go.

‘Don’t try too hard,’ he said.

Ian was wearing a grey sports jacket that was too big, but then most men’s clothes were too big on him. He wore the same vaguely therapeutic-looking sneakers, tan slacks, a check shirt. I took a tissue out of my bag and blotted off some of my lipstick.

I didn’t think it polite to ask what was wrong with Ian, so I crossed the open-plan space to the kitchen and drank a glass of water while he limped around the house, getting ready.

I didn’t want the water so much as I wanted to see the kitchen, run the tap, remember the place. The glasses were in the same cupboard. And they were the same glasses: heavy-bottomed, square, with stickers that informed the drinker they were made in Czechoslovakia.