His favourite Saki story, ‘The Lumber Room’, failed to deliver its usual dose of vicious charm, and Noel got out of bed again, turned off the reading lamp and opened the shutters; it was a clear night, the Vale of Health magnesium-grey under a three-quarter moon, the puddles in the empty lane like drops of mercury. He stood for a while, growing steadily colder, and then fetched the eiderdown from the bed and sat swaddled on the window seat, staring downward. He’d spent much of the day in a similar pose in his eyrie above the Cast Court, a chemistry textbook open on the parapet in front of him for those times when the gallery was empty. It had been the fourth day of his vigil, and once again, his father had failed to appear; the hours had passed extraordinarily slowly. He’d seen a group of Sikh soldiers taking snapshots in front of the Moghul Gate, and a sailor tapping cigarette ash into a marble satyr’s mouth. Mid-afternoon, a couple had entered the small room at the base of the Trajan Column, and had remained in there for far longer than a general interest in the structure of the hollow interior would warrant, and just after that, a V-2 had dropped somewhere to the south of the museum, and the glass in one of the high windows had rattled in sympathy, like a distant road drill. ‘Came down near Clapham Junction’ was the verdict of someone Noel had overheard on the Tube home.

Walking back from the station to Green Shutters, he had come to the conclusion that he really should tell Vee about the Christmas Day meeting – partly because he ought to, partly because the encounter was beginning to assume an almost hallucinatory quality in his memory, and if he actually spoke Simeon’s name, and had to respond to the fire-hose of questions, exclamations and horrified squawks which would undoubtedly follow, then the whole thing might become more concrete again, but also because he missed talking to her, missed the syncopated rhythm of their conversation, their own peculiar patois, evolved to span the gap between them, like the Canary Islanders Noel had once read about, communicating across unbridgeable ravines with a language of whistles. Of course, they hadn’t actually had a proper sit-down talk for weeks, not since the arrival of the Great Yankino, King of Garrulity, with his giant head, and hay-load of hilarious anecdotes. No doubt he’d organized an enormous game of Hunt the Thimble on Brighton seafront, and Vee was still searching the underside of the pier.