SEATED BY THE SANDPIT NEXT to Marvar, Dyer did not mention Vasily’s mother. He talked, instead, of the difficulty of explaining Brazil to North Oxford; the uncertainty of life in Rio; Vivien’s legacy – barely enough to cover Leandro’s time at the Phoenix; and how, as a christening present, Dyer’s father had paid Leandro’s enrolment fee, or else Leandro might not have gained a place.

‘Has the school changed much?’ Marvar wanted to know.

‘It’s the same, and yet not the same.’

‘How is it different?’

Dyer thought. ‘We swam in the river. There was no security. We didn’t have telephones – we wrote home once a week.’ He still made Leandro write thank-you letters, he said. ‘And it wasn’t nearly so international.’

At the time, Dyer had felt unusually secure. He had a sense of fellowship with his peers, a feeling that because his mother and aunt had been through the school, it was somehow to be trusted. Yet after his parents died, taking away the answers they could have given, Dyer had come across his own letters home and was struck by a sadness that never found words, the bleakness of the weekly reporting of film titles and sporting outcomes and I-hope-you-are-wells. He had suddenly felt sorry for that boy waiting on the red pillar box, the wartime wounds and imperial aspiration which meant that his teachers and his parents could only ever supply their inadequate best … leaving him to muddle through with some sort of grace, delighting in marbles and conkers and crazes to make do.

‘What about the education?’

‘There were some decent values,’ said Dyer, with his tongue a little bit in his cheek.

‘Yes, but what did you really learn? What were you taught that helps you in your life today?’

There was a strange quality to Marvar’s probing. It stimulated Dyer to take more care in how he answered. It was as if Marvar was struggling to resolve a parallel issue, and Dyer could help him.

‘We were taught that everyone has a talent,’ realising even as he said this how banal it sounded. ‘It may be hidden to the world, but dig deep enough – you’ll find it.’

‘What is your talent?’

‘Oh, I’m still digging.’

‘Seriously.’