He wanders round looking at the books on the shelves. She pours tea and he sits down with a little sigh; she needn’t have worried. He seems content, relaxed even. She sneaks a glance; he has greying hair straggling over his collar; a good nose, beaked; brown eyes that gleam from little folds of skin. He’s watching her as if waiting; should she tell him how much she loves his book? She sits opposite, suddenly tongue-tied.

‘So how did they get on?’

He wants to know how his son performed, of course. ‘Oh, really well.’

‘Really well?’ His eyebrows peak comically. ‘Blake?’

‘He was reluctant at first, but we went back to basics with alphabet blocks and phonic cards. Once he’d gained a bit of confidence I set him a writing task with templates, and he didn’t make one mistake.’

‘I’m impressed.’ The brown eyes shine.

She pushes a plate with a couple of little cakes towards him, the icing splotched and scattered with lavender. ‘He helped bake these too.’

‘Wow.’ He takes a bite. ‘We never make anything like this at home.’

She glances at the coins of hardening cake mixture on the stovetop, the sticky bowls in the sink. Grace had been wearing a suit at drop-off, make-up and nail polish, one hand neatly bandaged. Eve had felt dowdy by comparison, but Martin is smiling at her as if she wasn’t sweaty, with her apron round her waist and hair in her eyes, possibly a dab of flour on one cheek.

‘We finished with a chapter from a novel and Blake predicted precisely what happens in the end.’

‘Which one?’ A storyteller, he leans to hear.

‘Lord of the Flies.’

‘Isn’t that a bit—’

‘Dark? It was only the first chapter. Izzy brought it in; I don’t think she had any idea.’

‘You obviously brought out the best in him.’ He nods, taking the second cake and inspecting the empty plate. ‘Unusual.’ He traces the ellipse on the glass, the black circle in the middle. ‘A hand-painted plate; are you an artist as well as everything else?’

‘It’s from a village in Greece.’ She laughs. ‘The eye is supposed to keep people safe from the glance of a blue-eyed intruder. I bought lots.’

‘Do they work?’

‘We’re okay so far.’

‘Gosh, a dimple. I haven’t seen one of those for years.’

The blood rises in her cheeks. It’s been so long since anyone mentioned her looks, she’s forgotten how to manage a compliment.

‘Sorry, the writer in me. I notice faces.’ He puts the plate back on the table. ‘Where’s the village?’

‘In the Peloponnese. We have a house out there.’ Does that sound like boasting to him? She never knows; she begins to bite her nails as she did when she was a child. ‘It’s very run-down,’ she adds quickly. ‘The garden’s wild.’