Sitting opposite each other, cradling their cups, Betty could smell the disinfectant on John’s hands even from a distance. He was right, the place was tidy, and clean. She liked that, in a man. She’d have to ask him to wash his hands, get rid of the stench of the Jeyes, though she wasn’t sure where the bathroom was. She looked again at the clock. The chrome had worn round the edge and on the stand, as it had on theirs, but the smoky glass and the Roman numbers telling the hours were clear and bright apart from the II.

‘I like your clock,’ she said.

‘Do you?’ he said. ‘I think it’s Bauhaus.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s art deco for sure. The designer was a man called Heinrich Möller and the clocks were made by Kienzle.’

‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘You know a lot about it. Nobody’s ever told me that.’

‘I’m full of odd snippets of information,’ she said.

‘Your pronunciation is excellent, too.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. Keep to the subject. Don’t let him ask. ‘My father had a similar one. He got it in Germany.’ That was no lie. ‘Where did you find that one?’ She was heading into dangerous territory, towards Germany, to Berlin.

‘In Germany too,’ John said. ‘At the end of the war. Possibly your father got it the same way as me. For cigarettes.’ He reached over to the mantelpiece for a packet of Weights, his hand trembling.

‘Possibly,’ Betty said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine.’ He fumbled at the packet and it fell to the floor. Betty leaned forward and picked it up, tossing it to him.

‘Butterfingers.’

He opened the flap, took out a cigarette, tossed the packet back.

‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Where was he?’

‘I don’t know,’ Betty said. She was practised in this lie. ‘He won’t talk about the war.’

She took a cigarette, waited while John struggled with the matches, striking one against the coarse surface, again, again, his hand shaking, his face twisted in anguish.

‘Here,’ she said, standing up and taking the matches. ‘Let me do it. Perhaps you should see a doctor?’

She lit his cigarette and her own, blew out the match, threw it in the empty grate.

‘It passes,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. A trapped nerve. Listen.’ He leaned forward, picked up the ashtray from the hearth, balanced it on his quaking knee. ‘Why don’t we go for a drink? What time do you have to get back? Have you eaten?’

‘Questions, questions. Yes to a drink. No, I haven’t eaten. And my last train goes just after ten.’