After the hymn the officiator gave a short address. Lola and the cousins and I had provided as much background as we could about Ted and his life, and it was a good attempt at a tribute, given that he had never met him. Practice helped, I supposed, since the man was probably doing this several times a day. He spoke of Ted’s popularity, his love of life and its opportunities, and his gifts as a perfumer. We were just shuffling to our feet again, to the first notes of the organ voluntary that the cousins had suggested to accompany the coffin’s slow slide between the curtains, when Jack scrambled past me. I thought for a second that he might be going to be sick, which had been one of his specialities as a younger child, but he pushed me back when I went to follow him. He marched up to the lectern and took his place behind it, and the recorded music was abruptly switched off. Lola and I glanced nervously at each other. He had given no indication that he wanted to make his own tribute and I regretted that I hadn’t thought of asking him.

Jack cleared his throat. ‘My grandad,’ he began. We waited in silence. ‘My grandad told me when I was just a little kid that pigeons are vermin.’

After another beat of silence I heard from the back of the room a snuffle that might have been suppressed laughter. I stared hard at Jack, seeing his stiff hair and the way his baby’s face would settle into the aggrieved lines of pre-adolescence. He didn’t blink.

‘At our other house before … before Mum and me and Lola moved, they used to sit on all the upstairs windowsills and on the gutters, and Grandad didn’t like all the … all the … mess they left. He pointed at it when I was going to bed one night and said it was smelly and they were dirty. And I looked at their feet, the ones that were standing on the windowsill, and they were all, like, scabby. Their plumage was dirty as well.’

This all came out in a breathless rush. Plumage was a very Jack word. Lola was signalling to him, little patting movements with her hands that meant slow down, speak slower, but he didn’t see her. His gaze was fixed on the back of the room.

‘I said, are all birds dirty, then? And he said, I remember it really well, he said no, birds are beautiful, they’ve got the gift of the air, all the freedom of the sky and it’s just the poor pigeons who live in London and eat rubbish and everything and sit on top of our dirt that makes them dirty. So they’re vermin in the same way as rats, because rats are really clean creatures, in fact. He told me that as well. Anyway …’