That was enough for me. I was already well into my clothes when Fitz started rattling off names. ‘Florence Nightingale? Holman Hunt? The Mahdi? Cardinal Newman? Prince Albert? Mrs Trollope? Lord Balfour? Friedrich Nietzsche? Christina Rossetti?’ And I didn’t stay to hear Sharon saying, ‘Warmer, warmer, no, now you’re cold again.’

I was at the foot of the stairs by the time Fitzpiers had been given enough clues and exhausted enough notables to be able to announce, ‘Of course – him!’ And I was at the front door, buttoning up my overcoat, when I heard Sharon explaining how extraordinary were the coincidences she’d unearthed and how exact were the details she’d confirmed and how everything was amazing and pointed in only one direction.

Before I had to listen to a single further infraction of confidence and good form – not that there was anything much left of either for either to infract – I opened the door and let myself out on to the deserted Christmas streets.

[3]

Which is where, for respite and the recovery of some little dignity, I would leave myself – were it not that I have promised to sacrifice truth to nothing, not even cadence. Life, as must already have been observed, is not so discreet as the reticent spaces between chapters sometimes pretend. It was all very well my getting myself out on to those deserted Christmas streets but once out on them I had to do something. It was cold and I was big with sorrow and I had nowhere to go. And don’t think that any ironies were lost on me, either.

If there had been a single hamburger or kebab joint open in Finchley I would have gone and sat in it. If I’d known where the nearest Salvation Army soup kitchen was I’d have gone and sat in that. As it was, the only places with any lights on were the pubs, and from those there issued the impossible sounds of festive couples. I walked around for hours in the hope of seeing something that would lighten my burden – a meteorite crashing on Hampstead or a rascal beadle lashing a whore or a Russian peasant maltreating a mare. But I was out of luck. Then, as I happened to be close, I stumbled round to my parents’ house and discovered that they were throwing a party. They hadn’t told me. I don’t think I need to explain how I felt.

‘Thanks for the invitation,’ I said to my mother who was sequinned and excessively décolleté.

‘Darling, I imagined you’d have other things to be doing tonight. I didn’t think for one moment’ – she could make one moment sound like an eternity – ‘that you’d want to come to this. It’s just for oldies.’