‘Judging from this, I’d say not. I think the letter’s a clever guess – someone who’s picked up a hint in some way and is attempting to put two and two together.’

‘But what sort of hint? I’m always careful, and I know that Noel wouldn’t ever …’ She thought again about what Jepson had just said. ‘Putting two and two together – you mean that someone looked at me and looked at the boy and thought we didn’t fit and started wondering?’ Because she’d never lost her awareness of this – the clang of her own accent against the precision of his, the way that he spoke sentences with the ease of a croupier shuffling a deck, while she doled out words from a sticky pack.

‘I think you fit together very well,’ said Jepson. ‘Matching jigsaw pieces don’t have to look identical. He was lucky to find you.’

He’d said little when she’d given him a carefully filleted version of her story – how she’d done a flit from St Albans to keep Noel with her, leaving her mother and her own grown-up son, Donald, behind (not that either would have begged her to stay; in fact, she had her doubts whether they’d even noticed she’d gone, but she hadn’t mentioned that bit). How she’d pretended to be Noel’s dead aunt, Mrs Overs, so that he wouldn’t end up in a children’s home.

‘But however did you get Mrs Overs’ identity card?’ he’d asked, before adding, ‘No, don’t worry, I don’t need to know, I’m just being nosy,’ so she hadn’t had to invent anything to avoid telling him that she’d extracted the forged document from Donald’s father by something really quite similar to blackmail. Some things were best left alone. And now Jepson had said something so kind, so unexpected, that she was momentarily speechless. He was lucky to find you. She’d never thought of it that way round.

‘Anything?’ asked the waitress, back yet again.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Vee.

There was a pause.

‘We’re not a waiting room,’ said the woman, acidly.

‘I’ll have fruit loaf and another cocoa,’ said Jepson, who seemed to have hollow legs.

‘Just warning you, we close at six.’

‘I’ve had a thought,’ said Jepson, as the waitress moved away again. ‘I suspect that most blackmailers are cowards. If he were to arrive and find that not only were you accompanied, but that your companion was prepared to vouch for your identity, I should think he’d throw in the towel.’

‘You’d do that?’ asked Vee, astonished.

‘Vouch for you? Yes, of course.’

She couldn’t fit the idea into her head: another adult offering to help her out of a hole, gratis.

‘Why?’ she asked, before she could stop herself, but Jepson had already stood up, picked up his hat and coat and moved across to her table. He put the hat back on, and then politely lifted it.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Overs. Is this chair free?’

‘Yes,’ she said, too startled to play-act. ‘But if he comes in, what will you do?’