I called Penny. We talked briefly about the coming week’s workload because it was easier this way than to do it within earshot of Andy and Leo. Then I asked her, ‘How’s Evelyn?’

‘Um. Well, she talked to Jerry. He’s asked us to a party.’

‘What?’

‘He says, so that we can all be friendly-style. I suppose it might help. You know he plays in a band?’

‘No, really?’

‘You’ll come to the party, won’t you?’

‘Yes, I’ll come,’ I promised her.

That was the weekend. It was ordinary, like dozens of others. Nothing had changed since the evening a few weeks before when I walked through the spring dusk to meet Mel; the only real difference was that the real Ted had absolutely slipped beyond my reach. Until now I had always been able to tell myself that I would reach him some day, and set matters to rest between us, and so I had put off the moment until the opportunity was completely lost. Now I was left only with memories of him, and my mother, and unwelcome recollections of my childhood. The walls were coming down, and I was exposed to the cold and unexpected draughts of reality.

Was this grief? I wondered. If it was, it was an odd version of it because I was angry with my father and I thought I hadn’t liked him very much in spite of the ties of blood. But still, and yet, the effect of his death was to make a subtle change in everything. It was as if I looked at my house and the canal towpath and Jack’s face and my bench in the bindery from a slightly altered angle or through a clearer lens. Then there was the impression of perfumes, swirling in thick clouds just beyond the point where my olfactory nerve could detect them, like a thousand genies released from a glittering phalanx of bottles. And there was the urge to go back and break through the silence that lay like a blanket inside Ted’s old house, to pull it apart and make a clamour with my demands and my questions. It was this, I knew, that drew me to the inimical Audrey. I wanted to know her.

I wanted to know what she knew.

On Tuesday evening Jack and I walked to her house. It was June, and the daylight streets were noisy with children wheeling in tight circles on bicycles and rattling over the kerbstones on skateboards. People sat on balconies outside their flats and spilled in crowds out of the open doors of pubs. The air was rank with the fumes of diesel and fast food, but there was still sweetness in it.