‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Henry, just telling you how surprised I was. About the photographs especially. I seem to remember seeing on display too a brass pestle and mortar Rachel Moritz had brought with her from Vienna.’

Henry glanced at the candlesticks on the mantelpiece. ‘Those wouldn’t have been much use in my life. Frank’s the one with the Sabbath candles set up, so they were passed to him, and I got the heirloom you noticed. Like the photographs it goes with me everywhere. Make what you will of that.’

‘I have.’

‘You’re not just observant, Leona, you’re also perceptive. Got a shock though, didn’t you, to discover a sentimental streak in me?’ Henry added as though it was necessary to provide an excuse, ‘Everyone seeks warmth in bleak moments and memories stirred by reminders of times past are known to serve that purpose – even for a reprobate like me!’

‘Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever called you quite that.’

‘“Quite” being the operative word. The stove you mentioned was a bit of an eyesore,’ Henry harked back, ‘not that I minded.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘Sometimes, on Julekha’s day off from the hospital, we’d drive out to the country and collect some of the pine logs I liked to burn. What a magnificent scent there’d be from the stove that evening—’

‘And you evidently have sentimental memories of Julekha.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m still in touch with her, by the way. She eventually used some of her wealth to set up a children’s clinic. Paediatrics, you may remember, was her speciality.’

‘Is she now married?’

‘No, as a matter of fact. Margaret once ran into her when she was nursing in India. The clinic is in Bombay.’

‘Another city where there’ll always be a bed for Henry Moritz!’ Leona exclaimed. ‘And please don’t interpret that as well you might. Julekha plainly thought the world of you. Why didn’t you marry her?’

Henry went to gaze through the window at the night-time suburban scene: the leaves of a laburnum, soon to be shed, lit by a streetlamp; a mellow glow suggesting cosiness within, behind the drawn curtains of the houses opposite; a couple strolling past, arm in arm.

‘Why didn’t you marry Julekha, Henry?’

‘Do I have to answer that question?’

‘Let me do so for you. Settling down is the last thing you want, isn’t it? The responsibilities that are the price of marriage. The aggro that children dole out along with the pleasure they bring.’

He turned to look at her and Leona saw that his fresh complexion had paled. But it was time that someone gave it to him straight.