Sir Harry allows her to dab his mouth when crumbs from his almond croissant stick to the foam that eating inexplicably causes to gather in the corners of his half-frozen lips. She has also become his interpreter, because not even his wife can really understand him when he speaks. Estelle doesn’t fuss or hurry him.

‘Did Julian reply?’

‘Not yet, Sir Harry. He is still in Paris at a meeting of the trust, and won’t be back until later today. Early evening, probably.’

‘Well, look, Estelle, I think we should get on with it, don’t you?’

He puts his coffee cup down abruptly and it lands on the terrace, smashing, but he appears not to notice. She summons a maid, who is standing some way off, to clear the table.

He begins. She believes she is able to understand every word, although his voice is strangely distant – she used to think of a bird trapped in a chimney – as if the words are reaching his mouth by a back route. Sometimes she is reminded of her brother Lionel’s telephone, made with a length of hosepipe and two baked-bean cans: she had to wait upstairs while he spoke to her from the back garden, his voice faint. He would break off to shout instructions. There are strangled yodelling notes in Sir Harry’s vowels, and a wind-instrument harshness in his consonants, so that the rhythms of speech have been scrambled en route from wherever speech originates. But she is used to it.

‘My dear Julian, the almond blossom is out and the . . .’

He points to the Mediterranean.

‘Shall I put “the sea”, Sir Harry?’

‘Yes, yes of course “the sea”.’

‘“The sea is . . .”?’

‘The sea is calm and as blue as a . . .’

‘“A duck’s egg”?’

‘Duck egg. Julian, may I remind you that it has always been the policy of Tubal and Co. to look after our animals’ (she changes this to ‘customers’) ‘with the greatest possible care, because our livelihood depends upon the silken thread of connection which runs between us and them, and which continues over many lifetimes so that the bank, as I like to say, is in a sense a . . . ?’

‘“A living organism”, Sir Harry?’

‘A living organism, which depends for its very survival on keeping the lifeblood flowing. Our business . . .’

Estelle is happy to see him warming to his theme.

‘Our business is based on the confidence . . .’

‘Of our customers?’

‘Our customers, as my father . . .’

He falters.

‘Sir Ephraim?’

‘As my father, Sir Ephraim, was fond of saying. Too fond.’

He stops now and gazes out to sea where the first yachts of the new season have appeared, looking crisp and clean and hopeful.

‘Too fond. The shit. We are not running a casino.’