Dyer started to tidy away his notes on the Tupi while father and son spoke. Even so, it was hard not to overhear when Marvar’s voice became concerned. ‘But Samir …’ he said, holding on to the table. He scraped back his chair and rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘It didn’t stop you playing?’ He was frowning. ‘Huh, don’t I know the type …’ patting the top of his head. ‘No, I’m with Leandro’s dad,’ and then a few words in Farsi, rather as Dyer spoke to Leandro in Portuguese when they talked about people in front of them. At last, Marvar said: ‘What time am I collecting you? Six? That late? Oh, there’s a party … Yes, yes, Ward Road, I have the address. Bye, darling … Love you too.’ He kissed into the phone and put it to his ear to listen, but Samir had rung off.

‘Anything wrong?’ Dyer asked.

‘Samir’s hurt himself,’ grimaced Marvar, returning the phone. ‘There’s some big boy at Winchester House. He called him The Pubic. Does he mean precocious puberty?’

Dyer laughed. ‘They usually have one boy who’s six foot two and clearly shaves. But he’s OK?’

‘He is good. It’s only his shin. It is nothing to worry about. We will still be able to go walking,’ he said with forced cheerfulness. Then in the way that people redundantly repeat what has been overheard, ‘I said I’ll collect him at six tomorrow afternoon.’

The buzzer went. And again. Longer this time.

Marvar shot a look at Dyer. The muscles tightened around his eyes.

‘The pizzas,’ clarified Dyer.

An Albanian boy on a motorbike handed them over. Dyer unpacked the pizzas from their boxes onto plates. Marvar nibbled dejectedly at his margarita.

It was no longer light outside. The darkness was crushing him.

‘Where’s the loo?’

‘Down there, on the right.’

His shadow, magnified, cartwheeled across the wall.

‘I know she’s dead,’ he hiccupped, when he returned.

He lay back in the chair. The pulse was racing in his temple.

‘You have no proof,’ said Dyer.

Marvar was leaping ahead, chasing the worst again. His conversation with Samir had startled something. He was like a sheep who had scented the slaughterhouse.

He hiccupped again. His wife was in Tehran, in a tiled room, behind a locked door. She had cramp in her legs, her lips were swollen.

‘No, no, she’s dead, or she might as well be. What she loved in me is gone – because she will take it with her. I feel a large piece of me is no longer there. But as long as I live – and Samir lives – then she is not gone. While we live, she will not be completely dead.’

It sounded like a speech that he’d rehearsed in the loo.