‘Lunch will be ready when you want it, Julian. Do you need me there?’

‘Of course. What a silly question. I also want to run out to the boat quickly before lunch to see if the work’s been done properly. Can you ask someone to get a dinghy ready?’

‘It’s ready. Bryce is standing by.’

‘You never miss a trick: the queen of Bread Street. Will you come back? I need you.’

‘You don’t need an old bat like me hanging about. You are in your own bedroom and the luggage has gone up. And thanks so much for the present.’

‘You are an angel. My God, I love it here; every time I come, I am reminded of just how much I love it. The moment I step off the plane I get that scent immediately. It’s astonishingly powerful. Irrational. I think of it as the scent of childhood. OK, I’ll go down to the boat and be back in forty-five minutes. Stel, I always look forward to seeing you, it’s always a huge joy. Where’s Dad by the way?’

‘He’s just getting ready for lunch.’

‘OK. Stel, I know what you have done for him and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart. We could never have coped without you. But then you know that.’

He is becoming just a little grey at the sides. And he also seems to be assuming his father’s immense charm now, as if the supply has been bequeathed to him and he’s come into the legacy early. He was a shy boy. When he took over, the financial papers talked of the baton passing. One commentator spoke of the poisoned chalice; the bank was not so much a family bank as a fading bank, he wrote. Julian saw that standing still – his father’s preference – was eventually going to lead to disaster. She opens the present, a lovely Mont Blanc fountain pen, bought in Liechtenstein.

Julian rows, although there’s a twenty-h.p. outboard. He needs the exercise. Every rock in the cove, every little stretch of coarse sand, every precariously perched pine tree is known to him. As a child you explore topography at a very basic and personal level, and the places where you have been happy become embedded for ever in your consciousness. Near the water there’s a faux-rustic summer house with a tiled roof; when his mother was still alive it was used for teas and sometimes suppers as the sun was setting. He still thinks of it as the building in Valéry’s poem: ‘Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes/entre les pins . . .’ absurdly translated by C. Day-Lewis, father of Daniel, as ‘This quiet roof, where dove-sails saunter by, between the pines’. Pigeons don’t saunter, for starters.

This happiness recollected is my true inheritance.

As he reaches the boat, Bryce calls down to him, ‘Welcome aboard, Boss.’