‘Anyhow, one Friday morning, I’m pushing the Telegraph and Jewish Chronicle through number thirty-two when the door opens with the papers jammed in the flap. I try pushing them in, he’s pushing them out, and we both burst out laughing. He’s a big man, huge grey beard, silk-black skullcap on his head, deep eyes and – the thing I spot straight away – amazing fingers. Never seen hands like that, long and thin. While he’s laughing, I’m thinking, This man must find it so easy to play the fiddle.’

Those fingers, how could I ever forget? Slender, supple, white as snow, trim nails, tapering to the narrowest of tips. Not so much fingers as tendrils, sensitive as nerve-ends, swift as lightning. Invisible at speed, angelic in repose. His fingers.

My pulse is pounding and I can feel the arteries protesting at the added workload. ‘Carry on,’ I say. Peter scoffs a quarter-sandwich. With his mother gone, he eats like an aboriginal, storing strength.

‘I must have looked a bit shocked,’ he continues, ‘because the man steps back and says, “Forgive me.” See what I mean? Forgive me, not ’scuse me, or sorry, or watch it. “Forgive me,” he says, meaning – if I have upset you in some way, let me put it right. Those words, “forgive me”, take my breath away. My mam made me swear not to talk to the frummers and never to go into their houses. They kidnap Christian kids, she said, and kill them for Passover blood, can you imagine? She read it in a book somewhere. So I’m being very watchful and not leaving the doorstep. But there’s something about this man that makes me feel incredibly safe. I don’t know how to describe it, Mr Simmonds. He shows such respect for my feelings – like a saint out of the Gospels.

‘ “Forgive me,” he says again. “Did I give you a shock?”

‘ “A bit,” I say, or something of the sort.

‘ “I have been trying to catch you all week,” he says, “but I wasn’t planning on a tug-of-war over the Daily Telegraph.” He has a lovely rich laugh, you just have to join in. “May I ask you a favour?” he says to me.

‘ “Go on,” I say.

‘ “Tomorrow morning, when you deliver my paper, would you mind stepping inside for a moment to switch on my gas fire?”

‘ “Can’t you do it yourself?”

‘ “Not on Saturday,” he says. “It’s our Sabbath and we are not allowed to kindle light. It says so in the Bible, in Exodus, I can show you. But on winter mornings it gets cold and my kids come down to a freezing living room. You would be doing me a great service by lighting the fire on Saturdays, and I will pay you for it.”

‘ “How much?” I ask.

‘ “Fifty pence?” he suggests.

‘Brilliant, I think, I’ll be able to pay off the bike by Easter.’