“But for once you were too close. A part of it actually happened to you. All those car crashes and pornographic movies, Kennedy’s death, they’re your way of turning it into a film, something violent and glamorous. You want to Americanise death.”

“Peggy…” She had spoken with surprising force. Patiently, I followed her as she carried the drinks tray into the kitchen. “As a matter of interest, Dick’s institute did come up with some original research. I never watch pornographic films, and I’ve had a single car crash in my entire life. You have one every year.”

“I know. You live in Shepperton and you’ve brought up three wonderful and happy children. How, I don’t know.”

I leaned against the refrigerator, looking around the little kitchen with its elegant spice jars and expensive French saucepans, so different from my own, where scarcely a piece of crockery matched and half the glasses had been given away at filling stations. Peggy’s house was a boudoir designed for the charm and excitement of men. She had been through many affairs but had kept herself untouched by them. There were no holiday photographs to remind her of the men who had taken her to Florence and San Francisco, shared villas over the years with her at Vence and in the Lot. Not a masculine gift stood on the immaculate desk in her office.

She had never married, as if afraid that she might bear a daughter who would one day grow to be twelve and remind her of the years of separation from her parents. Curiously, the one person who had helped to sustain her had never been allowed to share her bed, and was the person whom she continued to reprove and reproach in the way she had done when I played pranks in the children’s hut.

“And what about you, Peggy?”

“Me?” She stowed the glasses in the dishwasher. “Are you trying to recruit me into your repertory company?”

“I was thinking of the dedicated paediatrician who’s never dared to have a child.”

“I’ve left it a little late.” She dried her hands and placed them forbearingly on my shoulders. “Besides, I had you. I think I looked after you rather well.”

“You still do—is that why you became a paediatrician?”

“Christ, don’t say that!” Without thinking, she slapped my mouth, then caught herself and winced at my bruised lips. “Oh damn—there’s blood on your teeth. Jim, I didn’t mean to upset you over Miriam…”