‘I was officially there as “cook”.’ I glower.

‘Sage has no inkling of your identity,’ Mr Huff confides. ‘I suppose that’s to be expected,’ he adds, idly, ‘with the generational difference.’

‘Generational?’ I echo, bemused.

‘I concede that the name is a little twee.’ He grins.

He grins. Yes, he grins. Mr Huff grins. At me. And while I’m still confused about what it is that he’s saying, exactly (‘generational difference’? And … and how exactly did he get to be so well-informed about my beautiful Mame? Alys? Mrs Barrow?), I’m struck – yes, struck – by how very handsome he is when he smiles. It’s not the teeth. Although the teeth are fine – for a smoker. The teeth are good enough. But something in the jaw, the cheekbones. A fine-ness. A fragility. And the eyes: a wide-spaced hazel behind his little wire-rimmed spectacles. Warm. Shy. Humourful. And the delicacy of his features conjoined with the light, careless tangle of pale, brown curls which hang across his forehead, around his ears …

A different generation?!

‘Is this meeting connected to the book?’ I wonder, and then before he can respond: ‘Because I thought you’d already made up your mind to abandon all—’

‘Not that it’s any of your affair,’ Mr Huff interjects drolly, ‘but I took Mrs Meadows out for lunch at the Mermaid when I first arrived in the area. The food was execrable, but we got on terribly well. She promised to show me around Lamb House on a reciprocal date but then was suddenly obliged to journey up to Coventry for a few weeks to assist her younger sister in launching her latest venture: a butterfly farm – a kind of zoo for exotic butterflies. The sister’s quite the impresario, it seems.’

Yes. Mrs Meadows is very well preserved. I openly concede the point (to myself). But a different generation? I honestly can’t imagine that there’s more than a couple of years in it.

‘She apparently had an infestation of ants in her larval rearing house,’ Mr Huff continues. ‘Ants always pose a serious threat to the larvae. She panicked. And Sage flew to the rescue.’

‘Hurrah for Sage!’ I cheer.

Mr Huff lets this pass. ‘I’d pondered setting up a butterfly farm in Monterrey at one stage,’ he continues, ‘so we naturally had a very fruitful exchange on the subject.’

‘I don’t know why,’ I murmur, ‘but I’ve always thought it a little embarrassing the way …’

I peter out.

He honestly thinks I look older than Sage Meadows? With her awful, static hair and her green eye shadow and her brittle laugh? Not just older – of a ‘different generation’?! I mean how many years are there between generations? Five? Ten? Sixteen?

‘The way what?’ Mr Huff demands.

‘Sorry?’ I blink.

‘You said you always thought it a little embarrassing the way …’ he rotates a graceful hand.

‘Oh. Yes. The way aspirant writers seem to think that simply by living in the former home of another successful writer their allure will somehow, miraculously, rub off.’