Behind one couch was a fireplace with a dark wood mantelpiece – at just enough distance to prevent scorching the leather – and along the other wall, behind the other chair, was a row of low shelves hemming a small piano into the corner. The walls were crammed with pictures, and the bookshelf with art books: The Dutch Masters; Vermeer; Dutch Masters at Work at Home.

The art on the walls featured light-cast faces, real and pleasant, against shadowy domestic backgrounds. Stepping into this dark room of light figures was like entering a room full of actual people, people who looked as if they might speak to you if you spoke first, perhaps offer you a piece of fruit, or a glass of wine from the jug on the shadowy shelf behind them. People who might actually laugh if you said something funny. The people were real, beautiful, but in an ordinary sort of way. I liked the pictures. I liked them a lot.

The mantelpiece held china statuettes and tableware in blue and white, the same subjects as the paintings, hand-painted scenes of windmills and women in clogs. It was a very Dutch room. ‘The lair of His Royal Dutchness.’

But the most striking thing about the room was that it was pristine. The clutter that filled the rest of the house, that washed up in drifts against doorways and under windows, was absent. The Dutch Room was immaculate, as if it were waiting for some very important people. In fact, it was as if the kitchen was the servants’ quarters, and this one room was the room reserved for the masters of the house.

It didn’t take long after Hessel arrived, dressed in a clean shirt with his hair brushed, for me to realise that coffee in the Dutch Room was mostly just an opportunity for Hessel to relive happy memories of his wayward youth in Holland. I wondered who else he had invited to sit on this snapping polished sofa and regale in this way. Enough people for Basil to know it was a thing. Half the town over the years, probably.

‘Anna, would you believe I used to have a motorcycle?’ Hessel began almost as soon as he had entered the room and sat down on the couch opposite. Bette bustled back and forth from the kitchen, setting the large dripper coffee pot out on the low table between us. ‘I will tell you some things from Europe. You will like this. Although, you should know, my memory is not as sharp as it used to be. And also,’ he said, with hammy theatricality, ‘my memory is not as sharp as it used to be. Huh? You like that?’

‘Very good, Grand– Hessel.’

‘So,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘My motorcycle. It was a wonderful motorcycle – it was a very deep blue, which was just so unusual at the time. And do you want to know where I rode it?’ he asked. ‘I rode it all around the Netherlands. Oh we had such freedom back then.’