“When did you know, Mum—when did you know you loved him?”

“Well, all the girls wanted him. We’d never met anyone famous. Nobody round our way had seen anything like him. He had this real long hair. Everyone’s got it today, but then it was, well, it was like a girl’s—it was sort of shocking. I caught hell when I first brought him home. Me mum . . .”

“Granny Em?”

“Mm-mm, Granny Em. She took one look at him and burst into tears.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything, but Zeno immediately said to me mum, ‘Cheer up, love, it might have been worse, I could have been a Rolling Stone.’ She liked him after that, probably because he made her laugh.”

“But you, Mum, when did you know?”

“We met at the Lyceum. I used to go for the Friday dance. They had a live band on Fridays.”

“You went on your own?”

“No. I usually went with my friend, Eileen. We were dancing together, Eileen and me, and he was dancing on his own, and he came and danced near us. Well, we were giggling—he looked so weird. His hair was up in a ponytail and he had a funny suit—some kind of powder-blue job. He saw we were laughing at him and he said, ‘You think I’m a right Mary Ann, don’t you?’”

“What’s that?” Zen wanted to know.

“Oh, it’s a man who behaves like an old woman.”

“Like Daddy’s friend Ciro who wears the eyeliner?”

“Kind of. Well, anyway, he asked us to dance.”

“Both of you?”

“Yes. Well, he didn’t ask us, really, he just kept dancing near us. Everybody was looking at us. I wanted to sit down. I didn’t know what to do with myself, but Eileen was loving the attention, so we kept dancing. He was good though, you know—he made up his own steps. Anyway, he took us for tea.”

“Where to, Mum?”

“To an old coffee stall in Covent Garden; it’s not there anymore. He talked mostly to Eileen, because she knew about music—jazz and that—but he kept looking at me. He had this way of holding his cup near his face, every now and then looking at me through the steam. I felt like he was looking right into me.” She paused, looking at Zen. “You have his eyes, sausage. At any rate, he walked us to the tube and said perhaps he’d see us there next week. Eileen’s boxer friend was around the next weekend, so I went on my own.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“Mum!”

“Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about him; there was something about him, and I knew if I didn’t go I probably wouldn’t see him again. So I went. He was waiting outside, but we didn’t go in; he took me to a jazz club instead.”

“Did he kiss you goodnight?”

“No.”

Prudence didn’t continue. She looked out across the crowded café, and Zen knew her mother was transported back to the night her prince had come. She gave her a moment and then brought her back to earth.