‘You’ve caught me AWOL,’ said Jepson, looking rather guilty. ‘I’ll be back on the tombola at the interval.’

‘What are you reading?’

‘Great Expectations.’

‘Which bit?’

‘I’ve just reached the death of Magwitch.’

‘You had a child once,’ said Noel, in hushed tones, as if whispering to a dying convict, ‘whom you loved and lost. She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful.’

‘And I love her!’ said Jepson. ‘Well remembered.’ He stroked his moustache, which he seemed to do in lieu of smiling. ‘I really ought to read something more modern – there’s interesting stuff being published – but it’s always the old friends that call to me from the bookshelf. Any news about where that rocket landed?’

‘Someone mentioned Islington,’ said Noel. ‘I was talking to the librarian at Hampstead during the week and she said that nobody wants to read anything at the moment except Trollope and Mrs Gaskell. Incidentally, I put my Latin under your door – I picked a piece from the Evening Standard about fuel. I had to absolutely cudgel my brains to come up with a translation for “gas fire”.’

‘What did you decide upon?’

‘Aer calidus ignis. “Hot vapour fire”.’

‘That sounds a decent attempt. I’ll look at it when we get back. Aer calidus ignis …’ he repeated, fingering his moustache.

He’d been a lodger at Green Shutters since the beginning of the year, arriving with a canvas rucksack and a heavy cold. Noel had been initially doubtful.

‘Mr Jepson’s very … enervated,’ he’d said to Vee, after his first lesson.

‘Which means?’

‘Spiritless.’

‘Spiritless? He went to a university,’ said Vee, exasperated. ‘He knows Latin. He writes for a living. What do you want, party hats? The last person who answered the advertisement spelled “lodging” with a “j” – is that who you’d want teaching you English? Is it the ear that’s worrying you?’

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Well, what is it? You’ve never complained about Dr Parry-Jones being enervated, and I don’t see her dancing any jigs.’

It had been clear that this was one of those times when it really wasn’t worth pursuing a discussion with Vee, and Noel had taken his doubts away again, and examined them in private. Perhaps ‘enervated’ had been the wrong word; ‘extinguished’ might have been more accurate. Jepson was present but unlit, so that in the dining room he was more furniture than inhabitant, talked around and over, but never to. But in lessons there were glimmers – he had seized Noel’s first essay and pushed the words around the page like backgammon counters, showing him how to introduce a subject, how to make a neat and satisfying ending, how to prune and rearrange the content. ‘If I have any talent at all, it’s for editing,’ he’d said, and out of that tiny wisp of self-praise had grown their first real conversation – on the subject of dull openings to novels – and after that it had been easier, and Jepson had gradually become a visible member of the household, though never a very audible one, unless you could get him on his own.