‘Fifteen.’

‘Well, it’s a bit … I mean, it’s quite … risqué…’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Noel, making a mental note to buy it at the earliest opportunity.

‘So who looks after you now?’ asked Winnie. ‘Not Miss Lee, surely?’

‘Miss Lee?’

‘Your godmother’s companion.’

‘Oh … no.’ There was a photograph of Florrie Lee on the wall of the drawing room, neat and alert behind a well-organized desk. ‘No, she died before I ever lived there. My aunt takes care of me.’ And how many times, he wondered, had he used the word ‘aunt’ over the last few hours? Aunt. It had almost ceased to make sense as a syllable. Aunt, aunt, aunt. Was it even a word? ‘I call her Mar,’ he said, and found himself yawning, hugely. ‘Sorry. I had a sleepless night. I ought to go home, really.’

‘Did you hear the Kilburn rocket?’

‘I heard a crump at around five o’clock. How much longer do you think they’ll go on for – do you have inside information?’

She shook her head. ‘Nobody seems to know. I’ve been told that the Germans keep shifting the launch sites as the Allies advance.’ She noticed a speck on her sleeve, and brushed it off. It was immediately replaced by another. ‘Oh, damn,’ she said. ‘Snowing again.’

They both looked back over the sloping ranks of crosses, already partially obscured, as if by a fine net curtain, and Noel thought about the last lines of Joyce’s The Dead, which Mr Reddish had recently recited over supper in what he claimed was a Dublin accent, and Winnie thought about Emlyn. There had been no further news, no letters, nothing to grasp on to except occasional, dreadful weather reports from northern Germany. Strange to think that one might hope for the chance of reading a list of speculative paint colours for a non-existent dining room.

‘I should cut along now, too,’ she said. ‘Thank you for my tour.’

They shook hands again, and Winnie walked back up the hill towards Highgate Tube, while Noel headed in the opposite direction for half a mile, before taking a narrow passage that ran between two stucco houses and emerged at the edge of the Heath. The only noise was the faint pitter of snow. The grass was already covered, though the layer was still so thin that when he turned to watch a group of rooks lifting lazily above the old gun emplacement, he could see the long, straight line of his own footsteps, like a green zip fastener across a white gown. And it occurred to him then that he’d forgotten to mention to Winnie his attempts to find the Green Man at the V&A, and that this omission might mean that they might speak again at some point, and that he could hear more about Ida Pearse, who could stalk with the panther skill of the Last of the Mohicans and quell bullies with a single glare …