She hadn’t wanted to write to Dr Simpkin directly; their last encounter had been brusque. Ida, having removed Noel from a children’s home, had simply deposited him at Green Shutters, trusting that he would be looked after, and then she had walked away. She had left the house, the city, the country, the whole chill, grey, narrow world she’d grown up in. She had slammed the doors behind her, one after another, and arrived in a place of blinding light and sea on every side, painted houses, bare rock, Africa on one horizon, Europe on another, and it had been easy to begin again, to become a person with a straightforward past and a shining future. And then Simeon had reappeared, and all those doors had burst open, and even when he’d re-embarked – owing money to half of Gibraltar – the draught had remained, whistling from the past, and she hadn’t been able to get warm again.

She had written to the solicitor, Mr Pomeroy, hoping that he’d remember her and enquiring in very general terms about Dr Simpkin and the child, and had found that both Pomeroy and his client were dead, and then, just after that, she’d seen the item in the newspaper.

‘I might never have come back,’ she said, ‘but my aunt – I live with my aunt – has a subscription to a London paper. It arrives very late, of course, but last month I saw a report about a body found after a rocket blast, and—’

‘Noel saw that too,’ said Vee.

‘—and I couldn’t stop worrying about … about who was looking after the boy. About who was protecting him, now that Dr Simpkin’s gone.’

‘Bit late for that.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘He’s perfectly well looked after.’

‘I’m sure he is.’

Vee folded her arms tightly, terribly afraid of this calm, poised young woman – she should have chased her away with a broom, not invited her in. In the strained silence, a bird began to sing on the conservatory roof, a parade of trills, and the visitor glanced towards it and said, ‘Oh, a blackcap – I’ve not heard one of those in a long time,’ and in that automatic curiosity, in that quick, pleased statement, devoid of boastfulness, Vee saw Noel again.

‘Go on, then,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘What do you want to know?’

Ida’s expression softened. The phrase ‘a widowed cousin of Dr Simpkin’ had conjured up for her someone bosomy, genteel and slow-moving, not this sharp-elbowed gatekeeper from the same world as herself, but beyond that there was something oddly familiar about the woman, something which meant that despite the frosted gaze and terse replies, she felt no deep fears about how Margery Overs might be treating her son.

‘Could you … could you tell me something about him?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean? What sort of thing?’

‘How is his health? Does he still limp?’

‘Only when he’s tired.’ Vee hesitated, not wanting to make Noel sound like Tiny Tim. ‘He’s never ill,’ she added. ‘He’s as tall as me and eats three times as much as I do.’ And now he sounded like Charles Atlas.