Leandro forked more spaghetti into his mouth, and went on slowly eating. He had worn the same expression in his first term, when other boys teased him for not having seen any of the children’s programmes on television.

‘Even Samir is going away somewhere,’ he said moodily.

A little while later, Dyer not having responded, he lifted his eyes and asked, as if braced for a negative answer, but with feeling: ‘Dad, when are we going to get a dog?’

‘Have you decided what kind of dog you want?’ hedged Dyer. He should have known that children hold adults to their promises.

‘Yes.’

Dyer glanced at him. The pasta, his concentrated face. His blond hair had grown over his eye.

‘One like Beatrice Updark has.’

Under Beatrice’s supervision, Leandro had walked Spassky on his bright-coloured lead around the Hard Court. Not once, Dyer now discovered, but several times.

‘I thought you didn’t like Beatrice.’

‘I like her dog,’ said Leandro defiantly.

Dyer suppressed a smile. He remembered what Vivien had said about the Phoenix when encouraging him to send Leandro to the school. ‘Your mother and I were treated as equals. We were taught we were every bit as good as the boys when we were as good as them. We learned to be competitive and ambitious and also adventurous – it was the girls who dared each other to go into the boys’ dorms, not the other way round.’

‘I’m not sure about his eyebrows,’ Dyer frowned.

‘They’re called furnishings,’ Leandro corrected him with unusual authority.

Dyer wasn’t going to rehearse all the arguments, but it prompted him to revive another of the offers that he had made to Leandro in Rio. ‘Why don’t I take you fly fishing, and we can discuss it?’

The upcoming three-day exeat coincided this year with the start of the fishing season. Dyer’s proposal to look for a country inn, on a stretch of river where he might teach Leandro how to catch a trout, had a pacifying effect on his son. A little less downcast, Leandro cleaned out his fingernails with the tip of a pencil.

Dinner over, Leandro had homework to do. When Dyer offered to look over this once he had finished it, Leandro declined. He didn’t need help, someone was already helping him.

Leandro opened his satchel as Dyer cleared the plates and briefly speculated in a back room of his mind who this person might be – Beatrice? Leandro’s history teacher, Ma Burgeon? – before other thoughts – about his missing notes, Marvar, Updark – crowded in.

‘Oh, Dad, I’m sorry,’ pulling a face. ‘This morning … I packed these by mistake.’ With a penitent expression now, Leandro produced a sheaf of pages covered with Dyer’s shorthand.

Dyer’s chest went cold. His hands shook as he grabbed them.

‘Thank God …’ and collapsed noisily into a chair. ‘Thank God.’