“Sit back and relax.” Dick stood behind me, reassuringly patting my shoulder. “There’ll be a little retinal irritation to start with.”

“Dick, I’m moving in and out of time.”

“That began some while ago. Look at the garden and see what you make of the colours—they’re probably drifting down the spectrum.”

I pushed Dick’s hands away and wondered if he was playing another of his devious games. He had always been strongly competitive and envied me both Miriam and my China background. There was a sly look on his face which I remembered seeing in his office at Cambridge, like that of a fisherman who had hooked an unexpected catch and was just out of reach of his gaff.

The spools of the tape recorder were turning, but I noticed that they were spinning towards each other. Assuming that this was another piece of antiquated BBC equipment, I waited for the unravelling tape to loop into the air. The black plastic case had separated from the frame, but before I could warn Dick he had stepped away from me to his camera.

Colours were floating free from the surfaces around me. The summer air had become a translucent prism and the blades of uncut grass were touched by a layer of emerald light. The giant Russian sunflowers that I had grown for Alice and Lucy wore crowns of gold that drew them towards the sky. A haze of dense ruby air suffused the foliage of the cherry trees. The scarlet paintwork of Lucy’s pedal car was separating from the battered metal, a glowing carapace that some skilful technician had painted on the air and which I wanted to press down onto the rusty shell.

The untidy garden glowed with chemical light. The apple tree and its treehouse formed a chalet-sized cathedral, its branches a stained-glass window in which the broken toys were set within their own haloes. The dragon patterns of the Chinese carpet under my feet, the shaggy bark of the pear tree scored with Henry’s initials, the creosoted panels of the fence were releasing the light trapped within themselves. The green veil of every leaf and stem, the scarlet of Lucy’s car, were detachable skins below which the real leaf and car were waiting to be discovered. The sunlight and its generous spectrum were gaudy pennants celebrating the unique identity of the smallest stone and twig. Refracted through the prism of their true selves, the leaves and flowers were glowing windows in the advent calendar of nature.

“Jim, look towards the camera…”