‘She wouldn’t have minded about the rug,’ he said. ‘Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.’

‘And what’s that mean?’

‘Everything passes, everything becomes wearisome, everything breaks.’

‘Cheery,’ said Vee, her teeth clamped on the needle, as she turned one of his sweaters inside out. ‘How’s your scarf? I wasn’t sure about the shade.’

‘I like it. It reminds me of verdigris.’

In lieu of the lost book, she’d knitted him a present to add to the modest pile at the breakfast table – a bar of Empire Military Chocolate from Miss Appleby (now seeing an Australian), a ring-bound notebook with a brace of sharpened pencils from Mr Jepson, and a worn copy of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury from Mr Reddish.

Dr Parry-Jones had ordered a rat in formaldehyde for Noel to dissect at her surgery, a prospect that appeared to please him.

‘Oh, there was something else,’ said Vee. ‘I forgot – that card on top of the dresser.’

Noel stood up and reached for it, and she realized that he’d grown. More trousers to buy.

‘It came yesterday,’ she said. ‘Postmarked Hereford. Go on, open it.’

Noel recognized Genevieve Lumb’s neat but forceful handwriting. Even the thought that she had licked the envelope was quite physically stirring.

‘I’ll read it later,’ he said.

Avril didn’t issue invitations to lunch. She didn’t ask the recipient, or even beg; she summoned. Almost everything about her twin irritated Winnie, and this imperiousness was the annoying start to the inevitably infuriating encounter that followed, but on the other hand, the lunches were invariably expensive and delicious – Winnie would often mentally re-consume them while drifting off to sleep at night – and when weighed against Avril’s presence, the scales hung almost level.

‘So I’ve booked Canuto’s for Tuesday at one,’ announced Avril on the telephone.

‘But how do you know I’m not on duty then?’

‘Are you?’

‘Well, no, as it happens. But what if I had been?’

‘Couldn’t you have got out of it? It’s not as if you’re busy at the moment, and I’ve got something tremendously important to tell you.’

‘Of course I’m busy.’

‘Well, we’re all busy, Winnie – I’m rushed off my tiny feet – but I still don’t pretend to imagine I’m so vital to the war effort that the Allies will lose if I take an hour off to go and eat roast plover followed by an ice-cream.’

‘Ice-cream?’

‘Yes, the dairy ban’s been lifted and they’re allowed to make it again now, didn’t you know?’

‘But it’s snowing outside.’

‘Apparently, Americans eat it all year round, whatever the weather, and Canuto’s is always full of them – I only managed to get a table because of Clive. So I’ll see you there, shall I?’

There was a pause.

‘What flavour ice-cream?’ asked Winnie.

‘Custard vanilla, I think.’

Winnie arrived early; she was led downstairs by an elderly waiter and seated at a corner table next to a peeling mural of the Grand Canal. At night, Canuto’s was a club, occupying the whole of the basement, but by day, a red velvet curtain was drawn across half of the room. In front of it, a pianist in a dinner jacket was giving a lacklustre account of ‘Berkeley Square’.