‘The movie’s a great idea, Mum,’ he says. ‘I told Sylvester how many people you know in the business. But the movie’s only part of it. Listen to the rest.’

‘The rest?’

‘The Twilight Fund.’

My gaze goes from one face to the other. Only yesterday, the moment I set eyes on this man, I was looking at an older version of Malo. Now, in the flesh, the similarity is uncanny. It’s not just a physical likeness – the same facial bone structure, especially around the eyes, the same disdain for a comb or a hairbrush – but they both have the knack of seizing your attention and not letting go.

I suggest we make ourselves comfortable next door. Sylvester and Malo, peas in a pod, settle on the sofa.

‘The Twilight Fund?’ I enquire again.

Sylvester nods. When he asks me if I mind him calling me Enora, I say he’s welcome.

‘Bottom line, we’re talking money, venture funding, investment. I’ve been in this game a while, Enora, and every proposition shakes down pretty much the same way. Life is a market. Think buyers and sellers. What you have to find is something people really want, and in this case Mr Shute’s made it very easy.’

‘So, what is it? What are you selling?’

‘Survival. You’ve heard of the Doomsday Clock?’

‘No.’

‘It was dreamed up by a bunch of nuclear scientists after the last war. They wanted to measure how close the world was to catastrophe. The closer we get to midnight, the closer we are to extinction.’

‘And now?’

‘It’s two minutes to. That, believe me, should frighten us all. Before Trump came along, and global warming took off, we had one hundred and twenty seconds in hand. Now, all bets are off.’

‘Scary.’

‘You’re right. And what makes it worse, or maybe better from our point of view, is just how helpless we’ve become. We’re all spectators now. What happens, happens. Unless, that is, you’ve got a great deal of money.’

His big opportunity, Sylvester explains, came a couple of years ago, when a Stateside road trip with a girlfriend took him across the Midwest. In North Dakota, he came across a roadside advert for apartments with a difference.

‘A difference, how?’

‘Normally, you build upwards, but the Midwest is full of old silos, big holes in the prairie. They used to house intercontinental missiles. Now most of those missiles have gone to sea in submarines so the silos are empty. Some genius with a black sense of humour decided to start building down. These are fully serviced apartments, storey after storey of them. For a lot of money, you get the full survival shtick: parking, a supermarket, full sanitation, every movie ever made, medical facilities, the gym of your dreams, the lot. There isn’t much of a view, but at least you won’t fry.’