He looked as if he didn’t mind me bringing it up. ‘About six months ago.’

‘How long were you together?’

‘Ten years. God, that’s a long time, isn’t it?’

‘About two-thirds as long as I was married to Tony. Did she leave?’

‘No, I left her. We both knew it wasn’t working any longer. But when it finally came to separating she wasn’t very happy.’

I liked the strength of mind that his decision implied. I know it takes courage to walk out of a long relationship. Thinking of Tony and me, and of Stanley from whom I hadn’t heard in years even though I had once imagined that I couldn’t draw a single breath apart from him, I asked, ‘Did you have someone else?’

‘No. I still don’t.’

I found myself looking as if for the first time at the shape of his face. There was a new noise in my ears that I identified as the circulation of my blood. The sudden awareness that I was attracted to someone – to him, to Jack’s English teacher – was so startling that it left me without anything to say.

Then he added, ‘I think I talked too much, when we were sitting out on the fire escape the other night. You made it seem easy to talk.’

‘Do you wish you hadn’t?’

‘I might have wanted to give a better impression of myself, first off.’

I smiled. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘I suppose the fact that you’re here now means I needn’t.’ We had shared a bottle of Montepulciano and had become absorbed in our conversation. I saw his hand lift slightly from where it rested on the tablecloth, as if he were going to cover mine with it, but then decided that this wouldn’t be the right move after all. He lifted the wine bottle instead and poured the last drops into my glass.

‘You were going to Suffolk. Did you enjoy it?’

‘Your part of the world, I remember. I went to visit an old friend of my father’s. I wanted to talk about him to someone who knew him.’

‘My father and I talk about Mum a lot. Just remembering her. The way she said things, like she always used to say braces and belt, not belt and braces. She used to cut the crusts off sandwiches and slice them into triangles, even if it was only for me. So I know what you mean.’

I almost thought, no you don’t. But it wasn’t so easy to dismiss Mr Rainbird. He might also be easy to talk to.

‘Did it help?’ he asked.

‘I’ll tell you about it. Some day, not tonight. I mean, it’s not anything enormous. Just the past, you know.’ The past, that inaccessible territory.

‘All right,’ he said easily.

We had finished the wine and drunk our coffee.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked.