He tries to imagine what could have happened at Tubal’s. Trefelix is probably right, a glitch in the system. Funny word, ‘glitch’. He thinks it must be Yiddish. The man who took his wife, Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal, comes from a family which once spoke Yiddish, although insulated from the shtetl by generations of Eton and Oxford and foxhounds – there’s a Sassoon somewhere in the line – and villas and Bentleys and ski chalets and discreet servants and post-Impressionist and fauvist paintings, while he – Artair MacCleod, playwright, actor, Gaelic scholar – lives in a draughty and crudely converted boathouse overlooking expanses of mud. Fleur, he has heard, doesn’t get on with Julian, the son who took over as chairman, just two years before Sir Harry had his stroke. Since Harry and Fleur were married – nearly twenty years ago, he thinks it was – he has not exchanged a word with her. He’s not allowed to: as part of the settlement that included his grant, he had to agree never to talk to the press about their life together and never to contact her under any circumstances, except through her solicitors. All he knows of her is what he reads in the papers and what little gossip reaches him. He tries now to find the address of the solicitors. He realises, as he sifts through randomly stacked papers, dating back ten, fifteen years, that he has no idea where he has filed – or deposited – the solicitors’ telephone number and address, although he thinks they are called Fetlock’s, certainly something to do with horses. He feels confident that his brain is circling its prey: all he has to do is wait. But the phone rings and it is the bookkeeper from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in Newquay, so she says.

‘I’m a bit busy, what can I do for you?’

‘Ah, Mr MacCleod, I just wanted to say that your standing order for the rent has not been paid.’

‘No, no, absolutely right. I was in the bank earlier today and the manager’s assurance was that it was the result of – these are his exact words by the way – a glitch. It should be with you very soon. I’ve asked them to give it the old hurry-up.’

‘Oh good. By the way, I’m taking the children to Thomas the Tank Engine when you come to Newquay. And we loved last year’s Wind in the Willows in the community centre. You were wonderful as Mr Toad. Poop, poop.’

‘Thank you. And thanks for bearing with me. My assistant is on leave, so it may not be straightforward, but you have my assurance that it is in hand with Tubal and Co., the private bank.’

‘By next week, do you think?’

‘Inshallah. The moving finger writes.’

‘My son wants to be an actor, thanks to seeing you in The Wind in the Willows.’