He was a psychologist who had gone off with an Indian nurse he’d been leading a double life with in Battersea. A separate family, a birth certificate found in the glove compartment. That was three years ago. She quoted, in an injured voice, ‘“Trust not the light that men call love; ’tis but a phantom gleam.”’

She confessed to feeling more exasperation than bitterness, furious at the careless waste, the cowardly act with which he had flicked aside her loyalty and love, and the streak of it salted her humour. ‘Imagine the mental effort to keep both lives in the air. Still, it kept him fit and alert – most of the time. He once bought me a bunch of flowers for my birthday, but it was her birthday.’

She paused to take in a mouthful of guinea fowl. ‘Have you come from London?’

He lived in Oxford, he had a boy at school here, he said.

‘The Phoenix, I suppose?’

‘Guilty.’

‘What do you do? You don’t look like a banker.’

‘I’m writing about a tribe in Brazil called the Tupi.’

‘Why, do you speak their language?’

‘A few words. But it’s virtually extinct now.’

‘I remember being taught that with eighty words you can say just about everything. You can practically discuss Wittgenstein.’

‘That may be true.’

‘I think I’d like to learn Tupi,’ smiling slightly and gazing into her glass. ‘I’ve always been interested in linguistics.’

He looked sideways at her. While she was not what Dyer would call beautiful – she resembled Cézanne’s wife in her short-sleeved dress – she had a marvellous smile.

‘I could recommend some books.’

‘Would you? I’d appreciate that.’ Then, as if she thought he was saying this to be polite: ‘I mean it. I would.’

The male voices were getting louder. Across the table, an American accent cut in. Ralph Cubbage in his tailored red jeans held up by an Argentine belt. Still gibbering about the Iran deal.

‘… ballistic missile tests … weapons factories in Lebanon … harassment of our navy in the Gulf …’

‘The US has been in violation of the deal from day one,’ protested a burly man in a suit who sat across the table – a Hamburg banker who had inherited the family firm. ‘Yet you can’t tell me a single one of the agreements Iran is supposed to have broken.’ He wore an Hermès tie, green, patterned with two yellow parrots facing each other on a branch.

‘Of course I can,’ said Cubbage, tearing at a roll. ‘But I didn’t come here prepared.’

‘Give that man a nice tall glass of shut-the-fuck-up,’ whispered Miranda.

‘Do you know him?’

‘Yes, I know Ralph Cubbage. He recently moved in opposite.’

He was mouthing ‘More bread’ to the waitress.

Dyer looked around to see that no one was listening.

‘All right, eighty words on him,’ he said.