‘Ah yes, well, a father has to make sacrifices for his offspring.’ Lucas smiled, while Esther, who had borne the brunt of ensuring the success of such wholesome holidays, sweating over tiny cooking pots and holding small hands for treks into woods and communal lavatories in the small hours, found that she had no inclination to contradict. Family stories morphed into legends with retelling, and who cared? The world, with its spiky realities, could wait. All the stress of her late start out of London felt a million miles away. Catching Dylan’s eye, she beamed, wanting him to know how proud she was of the way he had supported his sister, cheering so raucously when it was Lily’s turn to kneel before the Vice-Chancellor that she had seriously wondered if they might be asked to leave. Outside afterwards, he had led the way with the photo-taking, getting them all to pose on the steps of Senate House. Lucas had used the moment to report, in a lowered voice, the good news of a real ‘man-to-man’ conversation between him and Dylan that morning. Redoing the exams was going to take some micro-managing, he had added, but it felt like a turning point.

‘And there was Ireland too, by that river,’ Lily persisted, clearly enjoying the repartee with her father, ‘with all those monster-wasps, when Dyl trod on the nest…’

‘Exactly. Multifarious natural hazards. I rest my case.’ Lucas laughed. ‘How many stings was it, Dylan?’ He looked across the table, as they all did, for Dylan to pick up the story.

‘Like, twenty thousand… oh yeah, what a fun day out that was.’ Dylan smiled, but tightly, as if the puff had gone out of him.

‘I don’t think I’ve heard about these monster Irish wasps,’ offered Matteo, ever helpful, smoothing over the moment. He adjusted the aviators perched in his thick curly black hair and draped an arm along the back of Lily’s chair.

‘You so have,’ she scolded playfully, dropping her head onto his shoulder. ‘After Dyl trod on the nest he jumped in the river and a fisherman thought he was drowning and pulled him out.’

‘Oh yeah, maybe I have.’ He grinned and the pair exchanged a look. They were both still glowing from their holiday but Matteo was much darker, his skin tanned into a rich teak brown, thanks to the Brazilian father, who now lived in New York with a second wife and twin baby daughters. His mother had recently moved back to Devon, picking up with both an abandoned career as a folk singer and a holiday-lettings manager whom she had apparently dated decades earlier – ‘her first love,’ as Lily had dreamily described the man, prompting Esther to perform a quick hopeful riffle through her own early romantic history, but not able to come up with anything other than Lucas.