My tummy suddenly feels hot, and a deep, hungry hole forms in my chest. Carry on, I silently plead. Please tell me more about him.

The corners of her mouth twitch. “We didn’t talk very much when we first met, as if words would have spoiled everything. Words are the sandpaper that scratches away at a feeling until there’s nothing left. I first saw your father in one of the huge ruined buildings around here. They still hold tango nights there to this day, and back then I used to tango almost every night.” She smiles, and her face takes on a beautiful, unfettered glow. “When I saw him standing there, in the near-darkness, with all that loneliness and longing in eyes that were concentrating so intensely on me, it seemed as if I could see everything he had ever been and everything he would become. And he was staring at me as if he’d glimpsed something that had shaken his life to the core—and that something was me.”

She shakes her head, seemingly incapable of comprehending this fact, and stares ahead at the street rather than at me, refusing to glance back so as not to burst her fragile bubble.

“I was agitated, as if it were a performance, and I felt sick, as if before a flight. Dizzy with my desire to be close to him and feel his eyes on me. I couldn’t have said anything even if I’d wanted to. I was paralyzed by joy and anxiety.”

She overtakes a shuttle bus from Heathrow to Oxford.

“Henri always sat in the same chair in my flat—an old Eames a publisher friend gave me as a housewarming present twenty years ago. From time to time, I stare at that chair and chat to your father as if he were still sitting on it. But it all happened a very long time ago, even though it feels like only yesterday.” Her eyes are glistening now, and it has nothing to do with the oncoming headlights.

“What happened?” I ask. There’s so much I want to know. Why didn’t they stay together? I don’t know my father and I don’t know Eddie either, but it sounds as if they are two nuances of the same word.

“He didn’t love me the way I loved him, that’s all.” A single tear trickles down her cheek. “It can happen, Sam. It unleashes a war in your heart. You’re fighting against yourself, and you always lose.” She glances across at me. “Sometimes it’s the other way around and the other person thinks of you more often than you think of him, or loves you more. Love’s such a stupid cow!”

I have to laugh.

“It’s true!” she adds, flicking the windscreen wipers onto full power.