Audrey’s hostility rose like a rank scent between us; I could smell it even now as I ground the coffee and laid out cups, and watched Jack showing her a new postcard picture of a buzzard in flight that I hadn’t seen yet. It went beyond what could be rationally explained by our few meetings, even though I had been clumsy, and she had called me a prig and we had quarrelled. It was true that my father had taken and then lost her savings, and that some of her present difficulties might be caused by that, even though it had happened so long ago – but then surely it should be possible for her to say so and even to ask me for some recompense?

I thought the truth must lie elsewhere and that it might turn out to be something much less fathomable. And her attachment to my son did disturb me. There was an excluding, her-or-me, combative element to it that made me afraid for all three of us.

I carried the coffee tray to the table.

Audrey accepted a cup and dipped her head to smell it before taking a swallow. I saw the muscles of her gullet move under the crêpey skin of her throat. ‘That’s very good,’ she said and I found that I was disproportionately pleased with the note of approval. I settled more comfortably into my chair.

Audrey reached down for her cracked old brown leather handbag. She opened the clasp and began fishing round in the contents. ‘Since you’re taking such an interest in your father, this late in the day, I thought you might like to look at this,’ she said. She passed a little bottle across the table and I took it in the palm of my hand.

It was a beautiful flacon, made of smoked glass and shaped like a teardop, with overlapping petals of silver and mother-of-pearl cupping the base. The stopper was a smaller fluted teardrop of glass set in a silver collar. There was no label, no marking of any kind. When I held the bottle to the bright light coming from the garden I could see a brown residue of dried perfume trapped within. I touched the glass stopper, testing the fit. I could just feel the minute frictional resistance of ground glass against ground glass.

‘Go ahead,’ Audrey commanded.

Jack was bored by this. He left the table and wandered across the kitchen, then stood in front of the fridge and fidgeted with the magnets that held lists and reminders pinned to the door. Something escaped a magnet’s hold and fluttered to the floor.

I withdrew the stopper and sniffed. The perfume, whatever it had once been, was dead and gone. All I could detect now was a faint powdery whiff of roses. Roses de mai. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘One of your father’s fragrances.’

‘What is it called?’

‘Innominata. Nameless, if you like.’