At three-thirty, Dennis Osbourne arrived to be part of Alice’s welcoming party. He brought a bunch of pink and carmine peonies from his garden. He shook Larry’s hand. ‘America treating you well?’

‘Like royalty,’ said Larry.

They were waiting in the living room. It was twenty years since the place had last been decorated. The paint was crazed around the light fitting in the ceiling, and on the walls the turquoise paper curled outwards at the joins.

‘I expect you’ll be doing a new show soon,’ said Osbourne.

Larry nodded, wondering how Osbourne would get along with a man like T. Bone, what, trapped in a lift, they might find to say to each other. ‘Only a matter of time,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for a new agent.’

It started to rain. From the window Larry watched the garden grow lively with countless little movements of water. He had forgotten how much weather the place had, this incessant shifting of the light.

Ella and Alec were sitting either side of the card table. The reverend touched the child’s hair. ‘Hello, young lady,’ he said. Ella smiled up at him with an expression Larry thought she must have learned from one of her doctors. On the table in front of her were three red plastic cups. She was trying to decide which of them was hiding the ball.

‘And your good wife?’ asked Osbourne.

‘She’s well,’ said Larry.

‘When I think of California,’ said the reverend, ‘I think of long roads lined with palm trees. And a violet sky. And Rex Harrison leaning on a balcony smoking a cigarette with a kind of ebony filter.’

‘That’s it,’ said Larry.

Ella tapped the middle cup but she was wrong. Alec was still a move or two ahead of her. Larry wondered how long his brother had been practising. He had never seen him in the role of magician before.

As each car passed on the road at the top of the drive the adults’ attention – Ella’s too perhaps – was held there for an instant, so that the atmosphere in the room was constantly tightened and released in a way that was becoming difficult to bear.

Larry said: ‘It’s eight o’clock in the morning for me. Is there a drink in the house?’

‘Maybe some sherry,’ said Alec. ‘Look in the cupboard under the TV.’

In the cupboard there was a lone bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, two-thirds full, a fine patina of dust on the bottle’s shoulders. ‘What happened to Dad’s clocks?’ he asked. His watch had just bleeped the hour.

‘They need winding,’ said Alec. ‘I’ve been busy.’

‘I can testify to that,’ said Osbourne.

‘Well, she’ll be here soon,’ said Larry. He poured the sherry into a tumbler. Osbourne thought he wouldn’t just yet. Larry knew there was no point in asking Alec.