Jessie’s eyes wandered over to Stanley’s through the mirror, where they watered. He noticed a shift, tried to hold them long enough to get the measure of it, but she slipped out of reach, looked down at her coffee and took a sip. She wiped a deposit of froth from her lips, manoeuvring her tongue so slowly that Stanley could barely restrain himself from leaning over to meet his tongue with hers. When she finally looked back up, her eyes were clear and confident again.

He swung over to his own reflection and did a double-take: his face was preternaturally radiant. He was beaming. And it wasn’t forced at all.

She resumed the conversation and blew a strong gust of coffee-breath at him. He inhaled it deeply.

A Brewster Montgomery had been her mentor, she told him. A mature man whose offer of marriage to this single mother was heaven-sent, a man who knew how to temper her teenage explosions and treat her child as his own. A black American trumpeter who had arrived in Britain with the US Army during the Second World War, Brewster ran the Off Beat Jazz Club in a basement in Soho Square. He encouraged her nascent singing ambitions, allowing her to open acts but never treating her as an equal. She didn’t complain. She loved Terry.

Stanley soaked up Jessie’s husky Yorkshire vowels – a voice so different to his own flatter, neutral, London tones.

It was a sticky Sunday night at the Off Beat when Brewster had the heart attack he always looked like he was having when he blew his horn, she told Stanley, dramatizing with facial gestures, cheeks unbelievably inflated, eyes almost popping out on two springs like an animation, temple about to give birth to worms. She froze, milking Terry at the back of the club, while the tragedy played itself out through a broth of cigarette smoke, clashing perfumes, sweat, and the steam of spirits, ales and wines. She found herself wondering if her husband actually owned the club or merely rented it.

‘I returned home pot-less, worked my singing apprenticeship in grotty late-night pubs before graduating to the Northern club circuit.’