Jepson had left his book on the table, and also the matches and cigarettes, and Noel took a Mellow Kensitas out of the packet and attempted to light it, coughing gouts of acrid smoke across the kitchen and eventually retching into the sink. He crushed it out and sat down again, opened Great Expectations near the end and was at once back at home. The book had been his childhood frame of reference: the local fishmonger sounded like Joe Gargery; his godmother’s solicitor looked like Wemmick; the booming of thunder over the Heath was the noise of the guns from the prison hulks. And now he accompanied the adult Pip to Satis House (in Noel’s imagination, a cross between Green Shutters and the Natural History Museum) and together they climbed the cobwebbed stairs. Miss Havisham had just gone up in flames when the scrape of chairs in the hall heralded the interval.

A dense smell of river mud hung over the embankment, stirred by more delicate currents of petrol and sewerage. Vee breathed through her mouth as she hurried to keep up with the corporal’s long stride.

‘Can you swim?’ asked Mario, breaking off from an anecdote about his short-sighted neighbour, who’d once adopted a skunk, thinking that it was a cat.

‘No,’ said Vee. ‘Can you?’

‘Had to learn in the summer in one of the ponds up by your house – did it by numbers, a hundred guys in short pants and an instructor with a bullhorn. ‘Scoop with your arms, kick with your legs. One, two, three, SWIM!!!!’

The final word was so loud that there was an answering shout from one of the passing barges; there was a line of them in both directions, their blueish bow-lights stroking the choppy surface. Mario finished his cigarette and flicked it over the parapet.

‘So,’ he said, halting. ‘I have to ask you something.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Vee had been walking a careful hand’s breadth away from him, but he’d made no attempt even to take her arm, and now that they were standing facing each other, there was at least a foot of icy air whistling between them. She found herself thinking that if he gave her a squeeze, at least she’d be warm. His head was a giant silhouette, with the moon balanced on his right ear. He leaned down towards her and the moon disappeared.

‘Couldn’t say this in front of other people,’ he said, ‘but I can get you a turkey.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘A turkey. I drove a truckload for Thanksgiving, I know a farm where I can get one.’

‘Oh!’

‘Would you like that? Isn’t that what the English have on Christmas Day?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘Don’t know when I can get it – it’ll all depend what deliveries I’m making – but when I get it, it’s yours.’

He straightened up again, and the moon jumped back into place. ‘Thank you very much,’ said Vee, formally.

There was a series of hoots from the river, where a large ship was nosing under Blackfriars Bridge. It sounded, to Vee, like sarcastic laughter.