‘It’s not a very interesting story. Shall I try to make up a more exotic one?’

‘No.’

‘All right. My girlfriend and I used to go out on Tuesday evenings to a jazz night in a club in Shoreditch. And at the club one night we were having a drink with a man called Phil who plays the trombone. I was telling Phil that I wasn’t actually all that keen on jazz, it was Jane who was the real enthusiast. That’s fairly unusual, you know. Real jazzheads are nearly always blokes. Of course you know that.

‘Anyway, he asked me what kind of music I did like, which was quite polite of him considering I’d just dismissed the central passion in his life, and I told him I liked soul. And he said that was funny, because he was peripherally involved in the brass section of a soul band that some guy called Jerry was starting up, and I played the trumpet, didn’t I? I agreed, for brevity’s sake more than anything else, that I did play from time to time although I was pretty out of practice and really ought to give up before it gave me up. That sounded about right for the standard of the band, Phil said, and they were short of a trumpet in the line-up and why didn’t I audition?

‘So I went along to Jerry’s place, which was swarming with musicians and thick with ganja. It was fun jamming with these guys, and Phil as well, and I ended up in the band. We play four, maybe five gigs a month and we don’t get a lot of practice in. It suits me fine and I’ve been doing it for about a year.’

Cassie sighed and threw her legs out, and I gently shifted her weight so she lay on the side away from Mr Rainbird. This had the unintended effect of making us seem even closer together.

‘Shall I take her for a bit?’ he offered, with his shoulder touching mine.

‘She’s fine like this.’

‘How’s Lola at Manchester?’

‘You’ve got a very good memory.’

‘Actually, I’ve got a pretty lousy memory. I remember everything you said to me that day, though.’

It occurred to me, with a shiver of recollection about how it all went, that Mr Rainbird might be making a play for me in spite of the girlfriend with whom he went to jazz clubs. ‘Lola’s fine,’ I said quietly.

‘And Jack is coming on the school journey, isn’t he?’

I had had to persuade him quite hard, but in the end Jack had agreed to go with the rest of the Year Sevens on the school holiday to Cherbourg. I sensed that there was an element of negotiation in his consent – if he went, it was on the understanding that I gave him leeway in other areas of his life – but I had yet to discover what the terms of his negotiated settlement might be. Therefore the prospect of the holiday gave me a slight uneasiness. ‘Yes,’ I said. And then, ‘I’m going to take a few days off at the same time. I’m going up to Suffolk, actually.’