With such dividends! For Mike did call and ask to bring his friend Richard around to see the pictures. Not much over five feet tall, Richard could have been taken for a boy of twelve if there had been any softness in his face, but there were already strong lines bracketing his well-defined mouth and the shadow of whiskers below prominent cheekbones. He had thin black hair and eyes nearly as dark behind glasses as thick as David’s. His head was a political cartoon on his small body.

It interested Diana that Mike, so paired with substantial brother Ben, would choose a friend so diminutive. Tall as he was, Mike was still slight and coltish, with the manner of one who admired and was indulged.

Constance inspected both the boys with bright severity before she declined to join them on a tour of the house. She went back to her jigsaw puzzle even as they inspected the paintings in the TV room, only two of them because the wall space there was mostly given over to books.

Diana had always known that most of the paintings she chose were too declarative for domestic space. But in a house that was so rarely and awkwardly accommodating to people, Diana needed requiring presences on the walls. She often bought a painting the artist was surprised to sell. It was a refreshing change not to feel she should be apologetic for their large intrusiveness.

Richard did comment from time to time, but his voice was so low that only Mike benefited from his opinions. Diana learned from his small, gesturing hands, which told her that, however judgmental he was being, he cared about what he looked at.

When they reached the upstairs hall, whitely brightened by two large early interior landscapes by Takao Tanabe, Richard looked at Diana with surprise.

‘They are Tanabes,’ she said, ‘but they’re thirty years old.’

They had seemed to her when she first saw them delicate in their lyricism, fields of white with scatterings of red, ochre and black calligraphic images, but, set against the monumental serenity of his more recent prairie landscapes and the brooding weather of the Queen Charlotte Islands, this early work seemed crude and tentative. This judgment didn’t revise her affection for them.

Only when she took the boys into the bedroom which she shared with Constance did Diana suddenly wonder at the propriety of it, the large bed with its twin bedside tables and reading lamps, the matching bureaux and double closets. Mike did glance around, but Richard went straight to a more recent Tanabe in reassured recognition.