“Like I was telling dad – ” Roy said, by which point he was talking to himself.

I suspected Bella had been daunted by meeting more of the family so soon, unless she’d decided it was inappropriately premature. Sensing Roy was disappointed, I said nothing, and at length. He spent the morning with the book of expeditions Bella had given me, and then he took his Kindle – a birthday present from his mother – on the train. I saw he was reading a study of the magical in all the arts, and wondered whether he was seeking knowledge to impress his girlfriend. He continued reading all the way up the escalators to Central Station and leaned against the concourse wall to finish a paragraph.

Outside the station a Romanian in a headscarf was selling a magazine published to support the homeless. Her plaintive repetition of its name brought street cries of old to mind. Police were moving occupants of doorways onwards as a prelude to taping off a crime scene. Outside the restaurants and charity shops further up the slope, imported buskers were competing to perform. A back street glittering with shards of bottles, which reminded me of my aunt’s fate, brought us to Well Reddened, where the display of a menu written in Chinese might have been designed to daunt the unadventurous. My mother waved to greet us through the pane, announcing “Here are the men.”

She rose to her feet more swiftly than directly as we crossed the venerable carpet, while my father took his measured time over standing up. “How much more do you mean to grow, Roy?” she cried.

“I shouldn’t think he has much say in the matter, Astrid.”

“I’m only being silly, Jonathan. It doesn’t hurt occasionally, you know. I’m just glad to see so much of him.”

“You’d have seen more if I hadn’t stopped him wearing shorts.”

Perhaps my joke was too feeble to reach him except as a source of embarrassment, and I told myself my mother’s mood might have abashed Bella. “Sit down before you make me dizzy,” my mother urged and grabbed Roy’s arm to speed up the process, unless she was aiding herself.

The round table left a man-sized gap between me and my father. He dealt it a slow weighty blink on the way to saying “Shall we have a tureen of hot and sour to be going on with? There’ll be plenty left for the latecomer.”

“Yes,” my mother said, “where’s the invisible girl?”

“She didn’t want to risk the food,” Roy said.

“A prudent lady, is she?” my father said. “You should have told us and we’d have gone somewhere everybody liked.”

“I said you’d do that but she didn’t want you bothered.”

“Considerate as well,” my mother said. “You tell her she was missed.”

“Maybe you can. She might be meeting me here when we’ve finished.”