‘He’s Jack, too.’ She pointed to an enormous black-and-white cat who occupied one of the armchairs. There was so much of him that rolls of fur seemed to spill off the cushions.

My Jack squatted down to the animal’s level and stroked him. ‘Is he the leader?’ he asked.

‘He certainly is. All the others have to get his say-so before they so much as yawn. Don’t you, Mosh, eh?’ She stuck out a foot and stirred an orange creature that was stretched out next to the oven.

‘How many cats have you got?’ Jack wondered.

‘Eleven, last time I counted.’

I might as well have faded into the yellowish wallpaper. I looked round at the sediment of Audrey’s life, trying to imagine her as she must have been thirty or forty or however many years ago it was, when Ted knew her. Without her lipstick and her strange funeral costume she looked less outlandish than she had done the first time I saw her. She had a strong-boned face with a slightly hooked nose and although her mouth was stitched with vertical seams now and there were deep creases at the corners, the lower lip was still full. I thought she would once have been beautiful.

‘That’s cool,’ Jack said.

Audrey filled a kettle and lit the gas. ‘What about you?’

‘Cats? None,’ he said.

Audrey and he were exchanging looks. ‘I do what I want. I live how I like,’ she told him. I had the sense that huge chunks of their conversation were taking place in some dimension to which I was not admitted.

Jack nodded and smiled, one of his rare, unconsidered flashes of real and admiring approval. Then he darted a glance at me. Not like you, the look said.

Audrey made a pot of tea. It took some rummaging in the backs of cupboards to assemble three cups, so it was clear that she didn’t have many visitors. While she was busy with this I took Ted’s silver cigarette case and the flashy 1950s cigarette lighter out of my bag and laid them on the table. They looked incongruous among the newspapers and dismembered biscuit packets.

‘Have a Hobnob,’ Audrey told Jack.

He settled back with his cup of tea and a biscuit, and one of the less characterful cats leaped on to his lap. Jack looked as thoroughly at ease as if he lived there.

‘So,’ Audrey said to me, having ignored me since I walked in through the front door. ‘What exactly have you come for?’ She pushed Jack-the-cat off his chair and indicated that I was to take his place. I started to say that I’d really just called to bring her something to remember Ted by, but she cut me short. ‘I suppose by now you’ve seen his will?’

I nodded.

‘Did he leave anything for me?’