But you passed yourself. And looked after the children when their mother was at the hospital. Cut yourself some slack, he said, kissing her on the forehead.

He had been moving around the kitchen as they spoke. There was a grace about him, for such a big man, in the fling of his arm to open a cupboard, the brisk precision with which he took down the grill tray. A trumpet was playing, a woman’s voice, clear and mournful, coming from the speakers. Excellent choice of music, by the way, he said.

It’s the last record you played. I couldn’t take the pressure of choosing. Who’s singing?

He fetched the sleeve from the sitting room. There was a photo on the cover of a tiny woman with fair hair and a full frock. That, he said, is Ottilie Patterson. A County Down woman. He said she was married to a band leader and had sung with everyone from Lonnie Donegan to Muddy Waters. That a mostly black crowd at a jazz festival in America kept Duke Ellington and His Orchestra waiting because it loved her so much it wouldn’t let her leave the stage.

He had grated Wensleydale and was heaping it on the toast. He shook a bottle of Worcestershire sauce at her and said it would make all the difference, something boyish about him as he explained the modification.

You’re cute, she said. Like the children at school when they put crisps in their sandwiches.

He handed her a bottle of wine and a corkscrew and told her to find glasses in the cabinet in the other room. They ate at the table. He pulled his chair so close to hers their thighs were touching. A newspaper was folded open on the crossword page. He filled in the answers before she had time to read the clues, stopping to top up their drinks or eat the crusts she had left on the side of her plate, until a corner of the puzzle was covered in inky-blue script. He paused as if he was stuck, read a clue aloud to her. She got it right and he said, Well done!

Piss off. I feel like you’re teaching me chess or something and letting me win.

Sorry, he said, laughing. Did you ever finish that Iris Murdoch book?

I abandoned it.

Are you disappointed?

No. I bought it to take my mind off you. And then you asked to see what I was reading and based on my choice of book decided I wasn’t a complete moron. So Iris has been lucky for me, she said. She had addressed most of the admission to her plate and lifted her head to look at him.