I make a thumbs-up sign to him. Either he really is a caffeine junkie or he can read my insecurities like a book.

‘Well, when I was twenty-five-and-three-quarters, your little sister, Ruby-May, was born…’ I say, once Luca’s in the kitchen.

‘So she was zero?’ asks Lotte.

‘Literally zero. She’d just come out of your mum’s tum.’

‘Mum’s tum. Hey, that rhymes,’ Theo says.

I can’t think of what to say next, and Lotte admonishes me: ‘Uncle Nick, you’re not very good at telling stories.’

‘I’ve got a better one,’ says Theo, putting down the lurid green chalk he’s been using to colour in the aliens. ‘One day we all had a bath together – me, Lotte and Ruby-May. And I got out, because I didn’t want to be in the bath with two girls, and then Ruby-May did a poo. In the bath!’ He collapses with laughter. ‘And it floated!’

Lotte starts giggling too. ‘It floated right past me. Daddy said it was like a tugboat.’

‘A poo!’ says Theo and clutches his stomach, doubling over.

Abruptly they both stop.

‘She’s dead now,’ says Lotte.

‘Er, yeah,’ I say, taken aback at how matter-of-fact she is.

‘Will she come back?’ asks Lotte.

I cough. I’m not sure what Amy has told them. I brace myself for questions about God and heaven. Where’s the bloody child psychologist when you need him?

‘No.’

‘She must be far away,’ says Lotte.

Christ! Luca is walking towards us, carrying a tray with two mugs and drinks, and snacks for the kids.

‘I’m going to make a parcel of things for Ruby-May,’ Lotte says. ‘She’ll need stuff, if she can’t come home. And you can post it to her, Uncle Nick.’

Right. That’ll be an interesting address.

She gets up and runs inside, and Theo races after her.

‘You must have told them a good story,’ Luca says, raising his thick eyebrows at me and passing me a cup of coffee. He waits until the children have gone and then he says, ‘Can I ask something to you?’

‘Yeah, sure,’ I say, surprised at his politeness, but I guess it’s something to do with being foreign and not knowing how to speak English, even if he can write a dissertation.

He folds himself into the sun-lounger, pulling the back upright, and crosses his legs. He takes a sip of his espresso.

‘It is the difficult thing to say.’

I fidget with the hem of my shorts. I’m not good at emotional disclosures and I’m starting to worry what he’s going to reveal. Maddison was pretty frustrated by my inability to tell her how I felt, or to somehow guess what she was thinking. Like I was some kind of futuristic mind-reading droid.