He had said no, tell me. But she had simply smiled in an absent-minded sort of way, and tousled his hair, and told him to be careful not to drop his muffin into the coals. Now, however, he knew what she had meant.

He looked through the drawers of his mother’s dressing-table until he found a silk drawstring sachet that had been used for carrying a gold powder compact. He dropped the diamond into the sachet, tightened the string, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he straightened his necktie in the looking-glass, and went downstairs to the front parlour, where Olive was setting out the tea things. There was a large Rockingham pot of fragrant Ceylon, and a small plate of rather stale rock cakes.

‘You’re looking pale, sir, if you don’t mind my saying,’ said Olive. ‘You’re not considering going down with the fever?’

‘I didn’t have it in mind,’ said Peter. ‘Would you pour?’

Olive poured, and the steam from the cup twisted up into the sunlight like the Indian rope-trick. ‘I keep dwelling on your mother, sir,’ said Olive, sadly. ‘Such a lovely woman, you know; and even lovelier when she was younger.’

‘Yes,’ said Peter, sipping his scalding tea. He didn’t really want to share his memories with Olive. ‘I miss her very much.’

He finished his tea alone. He tried one of the buns, but they were too dry and somehow they tasted of death. At last, at three o’clock, he left the house and walked down to the end of the road, to wait for the horse-drawn omnibus to take him over the river into London. Across the street, as he waited, two barefoot street Arabs were trying to shin up the gas-lamp on the corner, watched in awe by another boy in a boater hat and a sailor suit, whose nanny had paused to gossip on the pavement with a postman.

The omnibus arrived late. Because it was a fine summer’s day, Peter sat up on the roof, and smoked a cigarette. There was a traffic jam on Blackfriars Bridge, and the omnibus had to wait there for almost ten minutes, while a cool breeze blew up the Thames from the docks, fragrant with spices and peppers from unloading ships and warehouses. Peter took out another cigarette, but tossed it half-smoked on to the road.

He arrived at a small jeweller’s shop just opposite Holborn Circus a few minutes before five o’clock. The late afternoon was crowded with carriages and cabs and horse-drawn drays, and the noise of horseshoes and iron-bound wheels grinding on the wooden road-blocks was almost deafening. A bell jangled as he stepped into the door, and then there was silence as he closed it behind him.