Sam is already asleep, but Alice is doggedly staying awake, clutching the rag doll bought in one of those dinky, scented shops behind the port.

‘Have you given her a name, darling?’

‘She’s called Rosie.’

‘That’s a lovely name. Exactly right. Kiss kiss.’

She reaches up and he lifts her half out of bed.

‘Kiss kiss, Daddy.’

He places her eager little body back and pulls up the covers so that she and the rag doll have equal billing on the pillow. The doll has buttons for eyes and a cat’s nose of calico. It has a deranged stare, not necessarily suitable company for his precious daughter.

‘I love you, darling,’ he says.

‘I love you, Daddy. More kiss.’

His heart is squeezed as he bends down to kiss her utterly innocent face. He wonders if his love for his children isn’t the result of his own inadequacies, as if he sees the children as the guardians of his true self, the pointers to what he might have been or what essentially he still is.

‘Go to sleep, darling.’

‘Night night. I love you, Daddy.’

She closes her eyes determinedly.

It will soon be over. Tubal’s with its portraits and handwritten ledgers and the Adam banking hall, its Wedgwood china, its rosewood tables, the panelled meeting rooms, the credit cards with ‘Esquire’ absurdly embossed after the customer’s name, the buckram hand-bound diaries, and the little conceits that have brought in the newly rich in the last ten years – all this will be a memory. He won’t even agree to stay on the board for two years, the usual arrangement for ensuring continuity and for securing some reassuring history for the new owners. In the City, private banking with Tubal and Co. is nearly as prestigious as owning a grouse moor or an Aston Martin. His grandfather said the bank’s success would always be ensured by inviting their friends to join the club. Now Julian thinks of Bernie Madoff. And he sees some parallels.

‘Thanks for letting them stay up, darling,’ he says.

‘You look tired.’

‘I am.’