‘No,’ said Vee. She remembered her silly little daydream of a farewell kiss and a promise: Hey, honey, don’t forget me, I’ll be back … She hadn’t even seen him to say goodbye. After she’d been waiting for over an hour in the police station – standing up the whole time because the only bench in the place was not only sticky but occupied by a man who was spitting bits of tooth into a handkerchief – two US military policemen had walked in, both wearing those huge white hats which had earned them the nickname ‘Snowdrops’, but which reminded her far more of the toadstools in Fantasia. They’d been ushered into the back somewhere, another hour had inched by, and then the police officer at the desk had beckoned Vee over and asked if she was waiting for the GIs, and if so, they’d gone out the other entrance with the toadstools and were being taken back to their camp. ‘They look after their own, that lot,’ he’d said, before turning his attention to a lost-dog report.

She’d intended to ring home, but someone had pulled the receiver off the only telephone-box she could find, so instead she’d found her way back to Brighton Station, where the odd train was running again, and had taken the first that was going in the general direction of London, and which, after stopping every twenty-five yards, had deposited her in a bomb-site called East Croydon at half-past two in the morning. Eventually, there’d been a bus, the first of four, or five – she’d lost count. She’d slept maybe ten minutes the whole night. Her head felt stuffed with sand.

Mr Jepson was still standing there, looking apologetic. Vee turned away and began to unbutton her coat with hands that were clumsy with cold, and somehow managed to drop her handbag. There was the bright, precise noise of breaking china. She picked up the bag and looked inside at the pieces of the knife handle, the razor fragments of the narrow, subtly coloured shell she’d brought back for Noel. ‘Well, that’s that,’ she said, and went upstairs.

His father looked thinner, and there were yellow crusts on the lashes of his right eye. ‘Are you still ill?’ asked Noel, once they were inside the museum. ‘I was beginning to think that you must have embarked.’

‘On the mend, now. No, I was visiting relatives in the North Country.’

‘Your father?’ asked Noel, remembering the purported resemblance between himself and his paternal grandfather. Simeon shook his head without replying. He had lost the bounce and lustre of their first encounter.

‘Not a lot to look at, is there?’ he said, glancing around the entrance hall, empty apart from a heavily sand-bagged statue of St Paul. ‘Tell you what, I could do with a cup of coffee.’

‘There’s only the service canteen in the basement,’ said Noel. ‘I’m afraid that they wouldn’t let me in.’

‘Pity. Would you wait while I went in there? I wouldn’t be long.’ To avoid breaking a note, he borrowed a half-crown from Noel and disappeared through the swing doors. There was nowhere to sit in the corridor outside. Noel leaned against the wall, and watched the curators come and go through the staff-room door. One or two nodded to him – he was, he supposed, a familiar sight by now and, moreover, he’d asked several of them over the course of the week about the carved roof boss he’d seen in the ruined church, which had supposedly been sent to the museum. No one had known anything about it.