‘You don’t know,’ Dyer insisted. Marvar was saying this just to see how it would feel. He wanted to test his capacity to survive his wife’s death. But they wouldn’t kill her till they’d got hold of Marvar.

Across the table, his hard corroding smile. ‘I do. I do know.’

He stopped speaking. The room was without a sound in it, quieter than the Taylorian. When the church bell struck, the chime was unnaturally loud.

Then he burst into tears. He had lost his footing. Up until now, God himself couldn’t have made a coward out of him. But he was cracking, there was no doubt. His confession hadn’t given him succour. He had been looking to Dyer for absolution. Or for Dyer to tell him what to do, maybe.

Dyer went to the loo.

When he came back, he was surprised to see Marvar’s chair empty.

Marvar stood by the fridge. Strangely calm, he seemed to be peering at the Pelé fridge-magnet which Vivien had given Leandro, and – clipped to it – a yellow post-it note scribbled with telephone numbers for pizzerias, cleaners, doctors, plumbers … the kitchen of Dyer’s life.

At the sight of Dyer, Marvar stepped away. He resumed his seat and pushed Dyer’s book across the table. It was as if all his nervousness had been replaced by resolution.

‘You never wrote a dedication,’ and handed to Dyer the propelling pencil that he was holding. ‘Go on. Write something. For me.’

Dyer accepted the pencil and looked at the title page. He still hadn’t worked out what to write. He was aware of Marvar sizing him up through his round wire spectacles. It was always like this, he thought, sitting down.

The last words Dyer remembered him saying: ‘Ah, yes. You had a wife and daughter,’ as he picked up the photograph of Astrud, stared at it, and put it tipsily back.

That night, Marvar slept in Leandro’s bed. He was in no state to walk home to Merton Street. And although he didn’t say so, obviously worried about who might be waiting for him there.

He had gone when Dyer woke in the morning. He had taken the book, but not his overcoat. It was hanging with its collar up next to Dyer’s tackle in the cupboard under the stairs. Marvar must have searched for it and not finding it he must have left.

Chapter Sixteen

IN THE NIGHT, DYER DREAMED a line of poetry which seemed so true, so wonderful that he had to bring it to the surface to be preserved when he woke. He dragged the line through the vertical meadow of his sleep and having kept it warm and tender in his mouth like a gun-dog with a bird, he dropped it before his waking self.