‘Everybody knows the moon is made of Stilton cheese,’ said Laura. ‘Eat some bread and butter with your oysters, Terry.’

‘Terrence,’ said Terrence.

‘Brought you each a glass of stout, that’s what you need with that lot.’ The owner of the wine bar appeared from the back premises with a tray. Laura smiled up at him as he set the glasses on the table. ‘On me,’ he said, returning her smile. ‘Don’t stick around here, boy, there’s plenty for you to do at back.’ He looked at Terrence without affection, turned and went away.

‘Thank you,’ Laura called after him. ‘Great!’

‘Who invented this libel?’ asked Claud, recapturing his cool.

‘It’s just something I grew up with,’ said Laura, ‘a wartime legend. Nicholas and Emily found it amusing.’

‘Mr Thornby finds lots of things amusing, doesn’t he?’ said Terrence. ‘Hey! He didn’t bring me any stout! I seem to remember Mr Nicholas found your work pretty comical.’

‘What is your work?’ asked Claud, beginning to find Terrence’s gnatlike presence a trial. ‘Do tell me if it’s not a secret.’

‘There’s no secret. I do restoration work.’

‘Oh,’ said Claud, ‘I see. What do you restore?’

‘She makes new noses and fingers for classical statues,’ said Terrence. ‘Noses, fingers and cocks, all the things iconoclasts knock off.’

‘Fancy you remembering such a long word,’ said Laura, peeling another prawn.

‘She makes models from life with plaster casts,’ said Terrence. ‘She had me standing in for a putto when I was small, that was a laugh. My mum supposed Mr Nicholas stood in for the mature male statues. She’s got a comical mind, my ma.’

‘Terry, come and clear up back here,’ came a stentorian voice from behind the bar.

‘Dear, dear, must go, thanks for the nosh.’ Terrence gulped his last oyster and scuttled away.

‘What a horrible boy,’ exclaimed Claud. ‘Did you really? I mean did he—oh, Lord.’

‘Are you shocked?’ Laura drank deep of her stout. ‘Delicious Guinness, so good for me.’

‘Of course not. Yes. No. It seems a bit odd. How did you—er—manage?’

Laura was laughing. ‘Oh, Claud, you are shocked. Terrence is a mythomaniac, every town has one. Eat your oysters before they die.’ Claud obeyed, scoffing his last two oysters, tasting only the salt. ‘It’s extremely difficult,’ Laura was saying, ‘to make a cast of a child’s nose, you have to plug its nostrils and bloody little Terry kept sneezing.’

‘Nose?’ exclaimed Claud. ‘I thought you meant, I thought he meant—’

‘Cocks?’ Laura was really laughing now. ‘Oh, Claud, you are gullible.’

Claud did not enjoy being mocked. ‘Why,’ he asked, deflecting the subject, ‘did your uncle, your father, put a bucket over my head and knock me downstairs?’