Overcome with relief and gratitude, Dyer purchased a ticket.

Minutes later, the guide’s educated voice poured out of the speakers in a soothing rhythm. ‘Our first stop is the University Parks. Many of you may have heard of Mesopotamia …’

Dyer hopped off. To reach Ward Road, he took a strange route through the Parks until he could be sure that no one was on his trail. The bridge where Thor had slobbered over Gilles. The cricket pavilion that Updark had eyed with nostalgia. At one point in his circuit, Dyer left the path and stood for several moments concealed beneath the low-hanging branches of a conifer. The tree had grown since the afternoon when he climbed it with Rougetel, and where, high up, tucked in a cleft between the trunk and the bough on which they had managed to perch, they found, neatly folded, a page torn from a magazine, and opened it to see, ineradicable, their first naked woman.

She opens the door and stares at him. ‘You’ve decided?’

‘I have.’

Her face in the morning light. Already she is losing her tan. She pulls down her dress to get rid of the crease.

‘Go and wait in the drawing room, and I’ll fetch it. You can talk to my memory, she’ll be pleased to see you.’

He walked to the end of the corridor, towards the sound of a Brahms clarinet quintet.

Thor bounded off the sofa to greet him. There was the squeal of farm machinery, and then Miranda’s mother shuffled out of the conservatory on her walking frame. A sudden warmth filled her unsmiling face when she saw it was Dyer.

‘There you are!’

He took her hands, her fingers grey and shiny like cake paper.

She looked severely at him. ‘Why haven’t we seen you?’

‘I’ve been travelling,’ he said. It was only the previous day that they had stood in the middle of the room like this, the radio playing.

She frowned at him, but changed her mind. ‘Miranda has missed you.’

It was a novel feeling for Dyer to sense that someone cared for him. She must have known it would take him a second to answer, because she leaned across and fixed Dyer with one eye like a chicken. ‘She can be peppery as a single woman. Marriage made her the salt of the earth. Her life has been tasteless since he went.’

‘Talking about yourself, Mother?’ said Miranda, entering and turning the radio down. She laid Dyer’s envelope on the counter. It was the same colour as her dress. ‘Coffee?’

What meaning was held in her glance, he couldn’t tell. ‘If it’s not any trouble …’

‘Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble,’ tutted Miranda’s mother in a high raspy voice as if she had swallowed Thor’s whistle. ‘Trouble been doggin’ my soul since the day I was born,’ and began navigating her frame towards the card table.