‘What were you reading anyway?’ he asked. ‘When I arrived, I mean. Do you read a lot? What kind of books do you like? Which authors? That’s a lot of questions, isn’t it? I’m not sure why I’m asking so many. I feel like one of those wind-up toys that keep chattering away. Like the teeth. You know the teeth? The ones that keep rattling when you put them on the table?’

‘I know the teeth,’ she said. ‘I love the teeth.’

‘I feel like the teeth.’

‘You’re behaving like the teeth. But in answer to your many questions, I was reading one of your mother’s novels, an early one. I’ve never read her before and thought I’d give her a go to see whether it might tell me something about you.’

‘And does it?’

‘Well, the heroes of her books do tend to live entitled, extravagant lifestyles, and I figure either that’s how you live or how you want to live.’

‘Sort of true and very true, in that order.’

‘But it would seem very strange if your mother based these romantic, slightly dumb but highly sexualized leading men on her son.’

‘In normal circumstances, yes. But you haven’t met my mother. It’s very much the sort of thing she might do. She likes to tell people that she taught me how to masturbate, just because she thinks it makes her sound hip.’

‘And did she?’

‘If she did, she did an excellent job, since I’m thinking of turning professional.’

Rebecca smiled.

‘We have thousands of books in our house, of course, because of my parents’ jobs, but I can’t remember the last time I saw either of them reading one. Someone told me earlier that she thinks everyone in my family just stares at their phones.’

‘And is that true?’

‘I’m afraid it might be.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘Have you ever heard of the word tsundoku?’ she asked.

‘Like that puzzle in the papers?’

‘No, that’s Sudoku.’

‘Then no, I haven’t.’

‘It’s a Japanese word. The constant act of buying books but never reading them.’

‘Right. Well, that’s what they’ve got, then. My father bought this massive biography a couple of days ago and seemed very excited about it, but I know for a fact that it’s been sitting on his bedside table ever since, unopened, just gathering dust. Both my parents used to be massive readers. But not so much any more, for some reason.’

‘Do you like your mum?’ asked Rebecca, and Achilles frowned.

‘Of course I do,’ he said, surprised by the question. ‘I love her.’

‘No, I meant do you like her books?’

‘Oh, I don’t read them.’

‘What, you’ve never read any of them?’

‘Well, I read her first two, and they weren’t bad, actually. But ever since then, she’s hired a ghost and I just can’t be bothered. She’s had a few over the years. Ghosts, I mean. The last one got eaten by a lion, if you can believe it. I preferred it when she wrote them herself.’