‘Before you answer, I have a hunch – it is only a hunch, yet Silvi will tell you my hunches have a tiresome habit … I won’t go on … but this hunch is whispering in my ear that Marvar may indeed have given you something. You might not think it’s important, you might not understand it, you might not even realise what it is, that it means anything. It might be, as you like to say, pure gobbledygook, but as we know – it’s what the Phoenix teaches our children, mon dieu! – one person’s goobledygook can be the answer to somebody else’s prayers.’

There was no mistaking the menace behind his words, or the iron look that followed, but he spoke in a sympathetic tone, as if he was offering Dyer not a hypothesis so much as a chance to save himself.

Dyer refused to offer his neck to the blow. ‘I didn’t know you were religious, Gilles.’

Opposite, Gilles’s face erupted into a smile.

‘Hey, Leandro! Over here.’

Dyer turned, and uttered a parental sound.

Leandro hovered in the doorway, looking for him. His eyes grew enormous when he saw Gilles.

‘Hi!’

Gilles leaped to his feet, stood up, and shook Leandro’s hand like an adult. ‘Silvi and I really appreciated getting your letter.’

‘Thank you so much. I had an amazing time.’ At Dyer’s urging, Leandro had written to the Asselins following his sleepover. He had returned from their house in Ward Road in something of a daze. The gym, the games room, the TV screen, the double cheeseburgers, the photos of Gilles with his medals – were a far cry from lamb chops past their sell-by in a small rented kitchen in Jericho, and pictures of an absent mother on his bedroom wall.

Gilles gave his shoulder a simulated punch. ‘Ring me and we’ll have lunch sometime.’ Then: ‘I hear you’ve been on the river.’

Leandro told him about his trout – which Gilles asked to see, affecting incredulity when Leandro said that he had released it.

‘Now why would you do that? Isn’t that, what’s the word …’ flicking his fingers. His eyes glanced to Dyer and back. ‘Hey, what are your plans tomorrow? Do you guys want to see Chelsea play Arsenal? I’ve got a box. Come with Pierre and me.’

Leandro gasped. Before he could reply, Dyer broke in to say that they were booked for one more day’s fishing.

‘Tant pis.’ But not to worry. Another time.

Speaking in Portuguese, Dyer said to Leandro: ‘Darling, please go and wait for me in the dining room. I need to finish talking to Gilles.’

‘And I must be on my way soon,’ said Gilles, patting his trousers for his keys.

He waited until Leandro had left the room, and sat down.

‘Lovely boy you’ve got there,’ tossing the keys from one hand to another. ‘He reminds me so much of Samir.’