The stressful aftermath of his putting his foot down with Moira and taking his lad up north for the window consecration had lingered on and was not yet gone. But it seemed to him now that what ailed his marriage had begun long ago. Why else had Moira discussed with Rhoda what she had just revealed? When they were newlywed wives. Rhoda a stringy-looking girl hoping to make her name as a sculptor, which she had since achieved. And Moira doing freelance work for the publishing house where she was now senior editor.

Though Martin and Andy had not known it, their wives had, from the off, felt threatened. Even though neither he nor Andy was religious in the formal sense of the word. But it wasn’t only the religion itself. Moira could not have made more clear than she just had that it was also what went with it. That well-known caricature the Jewish mother, clucking over her children and ruling their lives even after they had flown the nest – an image that didn’t fit Martin’s mum, and there were plenty like her, with the wisdom to let their children go. But it was with that stereotype preconception that Moira had married Martin, he was reflecting when she put his breakfast before him.

‘If you two wouldn’t mind my breaking the silence,’ said their precocious son, ‘I have something to tell you. I’ve decided that from now on I’d like to be called A.P.’

‘Your mother’s been letting you watch too much telly,’ Martin said with a laugh.

‘How would you like it, Dad, if you got called Martin William?’ the boy asked.

Moira brought his and her own breakfast to the table, warned him not to talk with his mouth full, and sat down opposite Martin.

The only change in her appearance is she now has lines of discontent around her mouth, he thought, though what we’ve achieved materially, between us, many would find enviable. Martin would be surprised if Moira didn’t end up as editorial director. And though Frolich and Dean were not yet names on a par with Rodgers and Hart, that day could come. Martin and Andy were now writing the words and music for their first West End show, into which American money was being poured. If all went well, Broadway would follow. But Martin would happily trade success for what his marriage lacked.

Spring sunlight was flooding into the room from the picture window overlooking the rear lawn, where daffodils flaunted their bonnets beneath a weeping willow, reminding Martin of Wordsworth’s classic poem.

‘I’ve never told you, have I,’ he said to his son, ‘that the Martin I’m named after wrote poetry.’ His other namesake, William, was the New Zealander grandfather he had never known. Nor, on a working trip to the country his father had come from, had he succeeded in tracing any of Ralph Dean’s relatives.