He didn’t know the name of his favourite colour, which at that moment was the colour of the flesh between her legs. ‘I prefer sunrises to sunsets.’

‘I like to sing when I bathe.’ He flipped her over and trailed kisses up her buttocks, waist, shoulder blades.

‘I like to run until my lungs ache.’ He slipped inside her; she was ready for him and accepting.

‘I grew my own tomatoes this year. Nothing in this world tastes as good,’ she panted breathily.

He pressed his lips on to hers. ‘Until now.’

It was necessary to close the window; the night air had turned nippy. Howard built a fire. It wasn’t absolutely needed, but they both appreciated the romance of the leaping flames, the golden glow that was cast throughout the room. They sat on the floor, still naked, with their backs to the sofa, a tartan rug around their shoulders. They sat close to one another, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. He could smell her sweetness and her sweat.

‘I have never read any of the Brontës or Jane Austen,’ he confessed, only just stifling a yawn. He had to fight the urge to sleep. He didn’t want to miss a moment, waste it in unconsciousness, yet his eyelids were heavy, his eyes stung with fatigue.

‘I’ve never read anything other,’ she mumbled.

‘My mother looks in on me every night, even if she’s gone to bed before I have. I hear her get up in the small hours and she carefully opens my bedroom door and puts her head round. She doesn’t come in or say anything. I think she’s literally just checking I’m . . .’ He paused.

‘There.’

‘Yes.’

‘Has she done that since you were a boy?’

‘No, just since Richmond.’ Which was the first time she’d seen him after losing Michael; the two things were inseparable.

‘None of my family has visited me since I moved to Blackwell at the beginning of the war.’

‘You haven’t seen them in all that time?’ He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

‘I’ve seen them twice. I’ve visited Highgate but they haven’t been here. I don’t mind. I like going to London, I miss it. I understand they don’t find Blackwell especially amusing.’

‘But you’re here. Don’t they want to see where you live?’

‘There’s always an excuse. My brother is at school, my father must work, there are too many of them to up-heave. The truth is, they don’t think of me as theirs any more. I’m an Owens now.’ She hesitated. ‘At least, that’s how they see me. Aubrey’s problem.’

He wanted to ask if that was how she saw herself, but couldn’t; he wasn’t sure he was ready for the answer. ‘Do you miss your siblings?’

‘Yes, I suppose. A bit, but.’ She shrugged. ‘We weren’t encouraged to be especially close. Our parents gave all of us the impression that we were rather an inconvenience, and somehow we each maintained that impression about one another. I have Mabel, which makes up for everything. I’d literally die for Mabel.’ This confession had a dark intensity that trumped everything else she’d ever said to him. He thought she might ask him who he would die for. He wondered how he’d answer. His mother, of course. Although he had the feeling it would be a self-defeating sacrifice; his mother wouldn’t want to live if he was lost. He used to readily drop into fights to defend Michael if a scuffle arose. When he found him, stinking and gangrenous, in the hospital in France, he’d had an impulse to beg a God he didn’t believe in to take him rather than his little brother. But Michael was dead now. He couldn’t die for him because he was already dead.