“Jesus.” Jack has recovered his voice. “Jesus. I literally don’t know what to say. Twenty-seven years ago . . . Wow. You must have been only a babe, surely,” he adds with apparent innocence.

I laugh out loud, genuinely impressed by his recovery. “Ah, Jack. I’m glad to see you didn’t sidestep the Blarney Stone.” He grins back, tickled by my appreciation, then pulls a couple of forms out of the folder he has been carrying just as my phone starts to ring. I don’t recognize the number, but the area code is local. Perhaps the locksmith I left a message for earlier. “Sorry, I think I need to take this.” Jack nods agreeably and gets up to chat to a regular whilst I take the call.

It is indeed the locksmith, who sounds both local and like he has smoked from birth. As I launch into an explanation, my eye is caught by an explosion of color on the wall behind the serving counter. I’m at an angle and can’t see the painting properly, but there’s something naggingly familiar about it. I climb to my feet to get a better look. It’s a reproduction of one of my mother’s, dominated by a slash of vitriolic crimson among a maelstrom of black. I can see her now, a cigarette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, with eyes only for the canvas.

“Still there, hen?” asks the voice of ten thousand cigarettes. Hen. It’s been a long while since I’ve heard that.

“Sorry. Yes, I’m here.” I’m still staring at the painting. “Sorry, what time did you say?”

“I can come now, otherwise it would have to be tomorrow. Are you home the now?”

Home. Home the now. He pronounces it hame, but the word still jars: the Manse is no longer my home. Home should be Jonathan’s flat in London with high ceilings, questionable draft exclusion and his book collection dominating the living room, but of course, neither Jonathan nor I are ever actually there. And even after all these years, I still call it Jonathan’s flat. If I could sell the Manse, we could pool our equity for a bigger place . . . There’s an image of a house hovering just beyond the reach of my mind, a house that could be mine. I can’t bring it into focus. “I can be back at the Manse in ten minutes.”

“Fine then. I’ll be just behind you; I’ll see you in about twenty.”