That was strictly but not really true; Rowland had been school captain when I was just a first-former, and he was well advanced with his research, was already very nearly Dr Fitzpiers, when I was a mere freshman. Together was not at all the word for what we’d been, notwithstanding the odd chat at the Union bar and the occasional tips about literature and life that he dispensed and the rather lordly postcard he wrote me when he came across my article slamming Miss Mitford’s Our Village in a Mid-Western American University journal. But Harrods food hall, the scene of this surprise rencounter, was not the place to go into lengthy explanations.

Sharon extended an arm clinking with gold charms. ‘I’ve heard all about you,’ she laughed and lied, ‘and if I’m not mistaken I used to sell a couple of your books.’

‘Used to?’ Rowland Fitzpiers, large and dark and affable, affected hurt and disappointment as if he’d never had any dealings with the real things. ‘What, going from door to door?’

‘Sharon had a bookshop,’ I explained.

‘Sharon still has a bookshop,’ Sharon reminded me. ‘Only it’s a rather more specialized bookshop than the one in which I used to sell a couple of your books.’

Beneath his heavy black brows Rowland Fitzpiers’s eyes twinkled, and from under his beard his lips twitched. ‘You mean you no longer stock rubbish,’ he said. ‘Well I can’t say I blame you.’

‘On the contrary,’ I said – for I too wanted to twinkle and shine – ‘she only stocks books to do with Hardy.”

‘Hardy? As in Laurel and?’

‘No,’ said Sharon. It was her shop. ‘Nor as in Kiss Me. As in Thomas.’

‘Him. Do they sell?’

‘Like hot cakes.’

‘Do they?’ Dr Fitzpiers, critic and reviewer, became suddenly ruminative. ‘Are there any gaps?’ He had the air of a man who might just have the odd afternoon to spare to knock out a book on Hardy.

‘I suppose there are,’ said Sharon. She even appeared to stop and think where they might be. ‘There must be.’

‘Perhaps you could show them to me.’ Rowland Fitzpiers’s face was all mobility. I was struck by his ability to twitch his top and bottom lip in independence of each other, as if they were amused by different things.

Sharon threw her head back and laughed, showing her throat. ‘I think you must find those for yourself,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’

‘That’s hard to believe.’

‘It’s true. I lack initiative. I’m like one of those old family cars that runs well once it’s going but needs a push start every morning.’

Sharon sparkled. She loved being out. She loved meeting people. And she loved Harrods food hall. ‘Then you’d better come to my bookshop,’ she said, ‘and we’ll see if we can get you started.’