‘You’ll see him for weekends, I hope. He’ll need somewhere for weekends, so this… place of yours. It could be just the thing.’

The woman was looking at the mint, and Michael could see that she knew what he was drinking. He could sense her distaste, and he felt his hand shaking slightly. Perhaps she had known from the moment he sat down – from the thin, cheap waterproof he was wearing, and the jumper underneath it. From his watery eyes, and his nose and cheeks – they carried the early signs of bursting blood vessels. He could pass for the dignified professional only until he was sitting still, and now he was the object of the woman’s merciless scrutiny. Her eyes were blue, just like Monica’s.

‘Weekends are for sport,’ said her husband.

‘Are they?’ said Michael.

‘Oh, he’s rugby mad,’ said the wife.

‘Same as his father.’

‘Same as you.’

Michael smiled. ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

The little dance had come to an end. They had both communicated everything, and were now heavy with self-satisfaction.

‘So what do you do, my friend? And where are you going?’

That was a pair of questions neither he nor she would ever ask.

‘Tell us about your grandson, if you have one.’

They wouldn’t ask that, either – so Michael told them.

He said, ‘I don’t have a grandson.’

‘No?’

‘No. But I suppose… Giggleswick. That’s a private school, isn’t it? Like Eton. I suppose—’

‘Oh, it’s not like Eton,’ said the man.

‘No?’

Michael turned his head, and looked at the profile beside him. The man had white hair, which was neatly cut – the fringe healthily full and pushed back in a wave. He had skin that suggested an outdoor life – a boat, probably, like the man who’d been on his way to Bristol Marina. This chap was almost certainly the type who sailed, and would be on the committee of some sailing club which would be just up from his house overlooking some estuary – and there was something in the way he’d said, ‘It’s not like Eton,’ that suggested he had intimate knowledge of the place, perhaps because he’d been there as a boy. Had he been a youngster, kneeling on the cold floor of some traditional old classroom as his housemaster sat open-legged in front of him? Had he possibly even been the housemaster, his poor wife still in blissful ignorance? Or was that all simply myth, prejudice and prurience? The old, unfunny joke about public school: ‘Backs to the wall, lads! Sir’s coming!’ The man was carefully not looking at him, so Michael tried again, desperate to haul his mind away from the sexual images that flashed and flashed again, leaving him blind and empty-headed. This man had never performed oral sex on anyone, and if he had it didn’t matter. Or perhaps it did.