It was full, but he had booked a table. We sat opposite each other in a corner between the Technicolor painting of the Amalfi sunset and the shell sculpture that doubled as a wall lantern.

‘Jack seemed to enjoy the Cherbourg holiday,’ Mr Rainbird said, looking at me over the leather-bound menu.

‘Did he?’ I was pleased to hear this. ‘He didn’t have a lot to say about it when he got home, except for the guillemot colony on the cliffs and someone throwing up in the bunk room.’

‘Yes, that last was definitely the highlight of the trip for most of them. He didn’t say much while we were there either, but he was part of it all. Jack’s an observer but he’s not an isolate. And he’s very knowledgeable about birds.’

‘Thank you for looking out for him,’ I said.

‘It was a pleasure,’ Mr Rainbird answered and again I knew that this was the truth. There was an openness about him, a transparency that didn’t in any way suggest simplicity.

We ordered our pasta and scallopa Milanese, and when they arrived I was surprised to get the full brandished-peppermill and bella-signora treatment from the waiter, a first in all the times I had eaten here with Lola and Jack or Caz and Graham. Either I was more attention worthy because I appeared to be half of a couple, or I just looked different tonight.

We discussed the film. Mr Rainbird had read the book, which I had not, and he knew all the author’s other books as well, and he talked about them in a way that made me want to read them too. I thought he was probably a very good teacher. We went on to talk about what we had both been reading lately, and then I told him about the business of bookbinding and how the physical shape and form of a book could affect my response to it. I mentioned Colin’s volume of recipes and the way that a carrier bagful of greasy magazine clippings had become something quite imposing.

He laughed at the story but then he said, ‘It was generous of you to do all that.’

‘I couldn’t afford to do it too often. Penny and I don’t have a very fat profit margin.’

Mr Rainbird smiled. ‘Just the same, it sounds to me as though you have the balance of your life about right.’

‘In most things,’ I agreed. ‘And you?’

A small silence shivered between us, made more noticeable by the clamour of the restaurant. There were things he could have said that might have made him sound needy or lonely or anxious, or on the other hand smug, but he didn’t utter any of them. ‘More or less,’ he agreed.

I wanted to hear some more. ‘You said you’d split up with your girlfriend?’