He smiled, but it seemed an effort. “I don’t mind what you add to the pigeon-holes, Essy. Even if your quotations don’t come from a text, they might encourage the search for something similar. The closest we can get to understanding new words is newspaper articles. James spends quite a bit of his time these days arguing for their validity.”

I thought about the clippings I’d just read. “I’m not sure,” I said. “They often seem no better than opinion, and if you want opinion to define what something means then you should at least consider all sides. Not all sides have a newspaper to speak for them.”

“It’s a good thing, then, that some of them have you.”

Da and I sat together in the sitting room, both of us trying to make conversation and failing; both of us trying not to let the other see our eagerness for the knock on the door. It was already six o’clock. Da was facing the window onto the street. Whenever his eyes registered someone passing, I held my breath for the sound of the gate then released it when the gate did not sing.

Da looked more animated than he had in a while. When I’d told him Gareth had offered to accompany me to Old Tom, Da had smiled as if relieved, but I couldn’t interpret it. Was he glad I had a chaperone for my meeting with Tilda, or was he glad I had a gentleman caller? He must have thought the latter would never happen. Whichever it was, it was the first time in weeks that the lines on his forehead had relaxed.

“You’ve been looking tired lately, Da.”

“It’s the letter S. Four years and we’re not even halfway through. It’s sapping, stupefying, soporific…” He paused to think of another word.

“Slumberous, somnolent, somniferous,” I offered.

“Excellent,” he said, with a smile that took me back to our word games of years ago. Then he looked past me, through the window. His smile widened. The gate sang. I felt the tingle of perspiration under my arms and was glad when Da rose to answer the knock. He and Gareth stood talking in the hall for a few minutes. I stood up and checked my face in the mirror above the fireplace. I pinched my cheeks.

I hadn’t been inside Old Tom since Tilda was last in Oxford. As Gareth and I approached, I was ambushed by memories of Bill. Then memories of Her.

“Is everything all right, Esme?”

I looked up at the sign hanging above the door of the small pub; a drawing of the Christ Church belltower.

“Quite all right,” I said. Gareth opened the door for me to step in.