Was he trying to persuade himself? He didn’t speak again until we were in the front room, where he consulted the television listings. “Here’s an old favourite we could watch,” he said. “I Married a Witch.”

“A bit twee for Patrick, I should think.”

“See if you like it, Patrick. Your aunt’s a fan.”

“I used to like it,” my aunt said. “I don’t know how I’d feel about it now.”

“One way to find out. You’re always saying we should look again.”

All this made me uncomfortable with the film, which in any case was too colourlessly vintage for my teenage taste. Since it was meant to be a comedy, I produced a dutiful laugh whenever my uncle’s reaction suggested I should. My aunt didn’t seem too taken with the prologue, where two witches – Jennifer and her father Daniel – were put to the stake, though they instantly returned as puffs of smoke. She seemed more engaged by Daniel’s creation of a body for his daughter, which helped Jennifer plague the Wallaces, the family who’d caused their deaths. My aunt sat forward when Daniel took away his daughter’s powers for falling in love with a modern Wallace. She sat back again once Jennifer regained her body, stolen by her father, and my aunt gave an odd laugh as Wallace trapped the magician’s essence in a bottle, which sang the line “I’m going to leave you now” to end the film. “What did you think?” my uncle said at once.

“Long long ago, when people believed in witches…” My aunt was quoting the start of the film, not too favourably. “Well, it was meant to be funny,” she said.

“I’m guessing it failed in that department.”

“It was harmless.” This sounded like a dismissal or at any rate an attempt at one. “What’s your verdict, Patrick?” my aunt said.

“I liked her.”

“Veronica Lake?” my uncle said. “I did at your age and a bit older too.”

“I’m sure there were hordes like you.” Having indulged us, my aunt said “But she was a body her father made. We never see what she actually looked like.”

“I’ll make do with how she did,” my uncle said.

“You wouldn’t give a witch a body,” my aunt said with unexpected stubbornness. “They’ve mixed up their traditions in all sorts of ways.”

“It’s only a film, dear. Not even a serious one.”

I saw my aunt suppress a response and then, I thought, another. Instead of speaking she retrieved a hefty almanac of British folk traditions from beside her chair. As she set about marking pages with a red pen, adding dots so delicate they were barely visible, she said “If you want to watch something else I’ll be in the studio.”

“Don’t leave us,” my uncle said. “We’ve got reading to catch up with as well.”