I stopped talking when I heard the back door going. We didn’t hold much with knocking or standing on ceremony. People announced themselves by name and came straight in the back way. I was over the moon to hear Fairfax call out from the hallway.

‘Fairfax coming in,’ he shouted. ‘Somebody forgot to build an ark!’

He pushed open the sitting room door. Stayed on the threshold of the room. He was wearing his green boots and thick cord trousers, shirt, tie and pullover. He was holding his green jacket over one arm and had his sodden cap in his hand. He looked startled to see Cordelia sitting there with her bare feet and bare legs, her soaking top clinging to her in a way that I hadn’t thought of until I saw it as Fairfax must have done.

‘Hello there,’ he said, straightening up a bit. The old dog was nigh-on seventy but he made an effort of pushing the strands of ragged hair back across his patchy scalp and removed his spectacles for long enough to wipe the raindrops from their lenses and smear the drop of moisture from the tip of his nose. ‘Get caught in it, did you? Aye, they said it would be bad but I weren’t expecting this. Haven’t known it come down like that in years! Cats and dogs and cows and sheep. Siling down!’

Cordelia shrank into herself a little. Looked to me like the air in the room had changed.

‘This is Mrs Hemlock,’ I said. ‘From the old Zealand Farm. Mrs Winslow’s.’

He nodded. Already knew. ‘Still got the greengages at your place?’ he asked. ‘Did some work for old Mrs Winslow and she always said help yourself. Makes a tart kind of jam,’ he said, then his long, loose-skinned face broken into a grin as he thought of a joke. ‘Not a jam tart, though! Ha! I’ll remember that!’

‘This is Fairfax,’ I said, before he could show me up any more. ‘Mr Duke. Lives in the house yonder.’ I smiled at him, the way I always found myself doing. ‘He’s a pest but he’s harmless.’

Fairfax looked indignant. ‘Harmless? How dare you. I’m still a danger. I’m a wounded lion, says I. Ferocious, in fact. Sharp of fang and lethal of claw.’

Makes me sad and happy all at the same time, thinking of him now. Forty years and I can still see that look on his face. Can’t remember me own mam’s face without looking at a photograph but I remember Fairfax, all pleased with himself and grinning; his little tape recorder always shoved under somebody’s nose and comb-tracks through the Brylcreem in his fine hair.

‘He has two of his own teeth left and he can’t fasten his own shoelaces without help,’ I said, grinning, and suddenly the storm seemed like something that had happened long since. ‘Tea, Fairfax?’