The Hardings. Neighbours in Sussex. Suddenly Jomier remembers. The pretty girl, a school friend of Lucy Harding. Cheerful. Friendly.

‘We played croquet. You said that humanity’s obsession with hitting and kicking balls was only explicable in theological terms.’

‘Theological terms?’

‘Yes. Games were the Devil’s distractions.’

‘Divertissements.’ Jomier remembers. He had been reading Pascal.

‘You had been reading Pascal. Anything to take our minds off death and eternity.’

‘How pretentious.’

‘Not at all. I was impressed. Particularly because you went on playing croquet in a most vicious way, knocking me into the bushes.’

‘I knocked you into the bushes?’

Judith blushes. ‘My ball.’

A sheet of light-sensitive paper immersed in a chemical solution in the darkroom: slowly the patches of dark and light take shape. Jomier remembers that hot day in June; a lunch al fresco; the Hardings – Mr and Mrs Harding, Fred their son, Lucy their daughter, and Lucy’s friend Judith. The image is like a Seurat or a Manet in his imagination – déjeuner sur la terrasse chez les Jomiers – with this utterly beautiful girl whose eyes had twinkled with merriment as he aired his sophomoric theories about ball games, male rivalry and man’s potential destiny outside space and time.

‘You married young.’

‘You remember?’ Judith holds an oval plate to enable Jomier to help himself to a slice of kipper pâté – that stand-by hors d’oeuvre of the 1970s. Has Ruth organised the evening as a trip down memory lane?

‘I remember because . . .’ He now holds the oval dish for Judith: a glaze covers the brightly painted clay. ‘I remember because I wrote to you.’

Judith looks puzzled.

‘But you never received the letter.’ Jomier feels around for memories in the sludge at the bottom of his life. ‘I wanted to ask you out . . .’

Judith waits; a slice of toast holding a smear of kipper pâté is suspended in mid-air.

‘But you lived in Suffolk.’

‘Norfolk.’

‘I thought we might meet in London.’

Judith takes a bite from her piece of toast; munches; listens.

‘But I had to get your address from Lucy.’

‘Wouldn’t she give it to you?’

‘It took time to summon up the courage to ask her.’

‘Courage? Why?’

‘It was a declaration of intent.’

‘To Lucy?’

‘And through Lucy to the world.’

‘Was the world that interested?’

‘One thought so . . . at the time. I had to have a pretext.’

‘For writing to me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wasn’t it to ask me out?’

‘Yes. But I didn’t want Lucy to know that.’

‘Why not?’

‘I felt that she might want me to ask her out.’

Judith shrugged as if to say that this was a poor excuse.

‘And she would gossip.’

Again, a shrug.

‘We were very timid about dating.’

‘Who?’

‘Young men from public schools.’

‘Some young men from public schools.’

‘Clearly not . . .’ Jomier could not remember the name of her husband.

‘Beresford.’