‘Oh!’ Laura laughed. ‘Of course I remember you, you were a wicked little nipper.’

Laura and the boy laughed together, excluding Claud from some mystifying intimacy.

‘If you’d like to run and get some more oysters,’ she said, ‘you can join our feast. I’m feeling rich today.’

‘I certainly would,’ said the boy. ‘You two celebrating something?’ He looked sly, his eye resting on Claud.

‘Possibly,’ said Laura, pausing from her work to take money from her bag. ‘If you run like the clappers, I shall have half a dozen ready for you when you get back.’

‘Okay,’ said Terrence, and ran, letting the wine bar door slam.

‘You have amazingly strong hands,’ said Claud. Aware that the hands he watched had recently caressed him, he felt a prick of reminiscent desire in recollection of their tenderness. They were not being tender to the oysters.

‘It’s my work.’

‘Your work? What work?’

‘I don’t just fan about doing nothing,’ said Laura.

‘What at? Doing what?’

‘I have a business in London.’

Terrence, returning with a fresh batch of oysters, put paid to further enquiry.

‘How is your um—’ asked the boy and prolonged his hesitation.

‘My what?’ Laura looked up at the boy.

‘Mr Thornby.’ Terrence glanced at Claud. ‘Mr Nicholas Thornby,’ he smirked.

‘Fine, thanks,’ Laura answered. ‘He’s busy, he works for several papers now.’

‘Doing what?’ asked Claud.

‘He writes articles, reviews books, does travel stuff, that sort of thing. He and my mother work as a team.’

‘I see.’ Claud watched Laura and the boy arranging the oysters on plates, alternating the oysters with rosy prawns and quarters of lemons.

‘And does your—um—er—still help with your work?’ asked Terrence, licking salt from his fingers. ‘The old man.’ There was a subterranean impertinence in the enquiry which Claud found disturbing.

‘He never did.’ Laura was brusque. ‘We lead separate lives,’ she said, concentrating on a prawn she was peeling.

‘Who is, what is, who does he mean by er, and um? What’s the mystery?’ Claud was irritated by the intimacy which, springing from nowhere between Laura and Terrence, excluded him.

‘One can see you haven’t had your ear to the ground when you’ve been at home,’ said Terrence perkily. ‘Why, even your mum would know what and who I am talking about.’ He bit a prawn, crunching it shell and all between large teeth.

‘Don’t choke on its whiskers,’ said Laura equably. ‘What the little sod is hinting at, Claud, is that there’s a legend in these parts that my uncle Nicholas is also my father.’

Claud gaped.

‘It’s general knowledge,’ said Terrence, pouring an oyster into his mouth.

Claud watched the boy’s Adam’s apple rise and fall. He tried to find something to say and failed.

‘It tightens the familial bonds,’ said Terrence. ‘These oysters are delish. Everybody knows about the Thornby family.’