‘Welcome!’ she said, and invited him to follow her along the dark corridor and down the steps that led to her basement flat. ‘This is us!’ she declared as she pushed open the door.

The bay window at the end of the room looked out on to a wall three feet away and steps that led up to the pavement. Only a meagre amount of outside gloom crept in, hindered even further by the sad grey nets.

Patricia switched on a standard lamp and said, ‘Take your coat off, make yourself at home.’

The room was modestly furnished but it was cosy at least, and the two-bar heater in the fireplace radiated some warmth. In the corner a small round table had been covered in a crisp white cloth and adorned with three large doily-covered plates piled high with sandwiches, a jam sponge and a pyramid of scones.

Patricia headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on, shouting to Judith on her way, ‘Don’t be hiding in the bedroom, young lady! Come and say hello to George.’

Feeling out of place, he perched on the edge of the sofa as if he was in a dentist’s waiting room.

‘I’m wearing my best dress,’ said a little voice, and he turned to see Judith in the doorway, resplendent in a fuchsia party frock tied in a bow at the back.

‘My! A princess!’ he said.

There was silence for a moment, and from the kitchen the shrill whistle of the kettle pierced the air.

‘I’ve brought you a present,’ he said. ‘It’s a jigsaw.’

Judith had never seen one before, and he tipped the contents of the box out on to the floor.

‘We have to put this pieces together, see, and make picture of this roundabout. It’s a magic roundabout!’

Judith was delighted, and set about the task immediately.

‘We start with the corners.’

When Patricia came back in with tea on a tray, Judith and George were silently and industriously piecing the jigsaw together.

‘Right, tuck in!’ she said in a jolly voice that didn’t quite suit her, and he helped himself to a salmon paste sandwich.

Later on, Patricia told him that Maisie upstairs had offered to babysit so that they could go to the pictures. ‘If you fancy it, that is?’

He was thrown by the sudden change of dynamic: two of them, not three.

Before he had a chance to answer, Judith said, ‘I want to come.’

‘Well, you can’t,’ her mother snapped.

‘I want to see Digby: The Biggest Dog in the World!’

‘Well, you can’t!’ Patricia repeated. ‘George is taking Momma to see a film about spies, aren’t you, George?’

He felt torn. He hated to upset the child, but how could he say otherwise? ‘Maybe we all three see Digby next week?’

Little Judith wasn’t a sulker. Even aged six she’d learned to live with disappointment and she simply nodded. ‘OK.’

Despite the fact that he’d seen the film before, they went to the ABC and watched Live and Let Die. On the way out of the cinema, Patricia took his arm and bombarded him with chat – mainly about Roger Moore and how much better he was than Sean Connery and how creepy that voodoo funeral scene was. She only stopped chatting when they reached her doorstep. They’d never had a farewell like this before – there’d always been an unacknowledged chaperone in the form of little Judith.