He picked up a picture of Ella, nude on a blanket, one year old. Then an enlarged, overcolourful snap of the wedding reception at Lemon Cove, Kirsty with her hair cut page-boy style, laughing at some remark thrown from the group of delighted onlookers, while her father proffers an elaborately wrapped package. The fondue set? The engraved cocktail shaker? The steak knives?

He stood, listening for any sound of movement in the house, then slid open the underwear drawer and disentangled one of Alice’s bras, an elaborate and robust garment of elastic and wire and pastel lace with a little silk butterfly bow at the front. He thought of the stuff he used to buy for Kirsty. Nathan Slater’s party girls had taught him about lingerie – the difference between the crass and the sexy, how to match colour to skin tone, what styles enhanced a curve, what cuts most flattered. He tried to remember the last time Kirsty had worn any of it, then realized he could not remember the last time he had seen her in her underwear. It had not been recently. It had not been for months. And this, surely, was as good an index as any of how things stood between them. Their steady retreat into strangerhood.

He turned the bra in his hands then pressed one of the cups to his face like a mask. A whiff of washing powder, of dried lavender. Little or nothing of Alice. He tucked it quickly back into the drawer and pushed the drawer shut.

‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.’

In the playroom, Ella was letting Alec show her various old toys. Some of them had been laid out on the table like exhibits at a trial – a boxing glove, a spaceship, a little black gun. But the toy that had caught the girl’s interest was a glass bulb with a wire spindle at its centre and six small square sails of black-and-white card. Larry remembered it. He was surprised that something so fragile could have survived so long.

‘You have to put it in the window, El. The sunshine makes the little sails spin round.’

She wanted to know what it was called. He shrugged. ‘Make up a name,’ he said. ‘I expect you can have it if you want. Ask Uncle Alec.’

‘Of course,’ said Alec. He was pulling out the old collapsible baize-topped card table from behind a pile of boxes.

‘I don’t think she knows how to play bridge,’ said Larry. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting ready for Mum?’

‘What’s there to get ready?’ said Alec. ‘There’s nothing to get ready.’ He carried the table out into the passage, Ella, the sun machine held gravely in front of her, walking behind him like an altar girl following the priest with some curious relic of the faith.