He recounted his experiences at the Battle of Cable Street. ‘Standing there in a peaceful crowd, we were charged by mounted policemen screaming about dirty Jews,’ he told her. ‘They beat us with their truncheons and pushed us through the plate-glass windows.’

She had been quarantined with the Fascists in Tower Gardens, and had seen none of the fighting. ‘That wasn’t the way it was reported,’ she said. She had believed the newspapers that said it had been a street riot organized by hooligans.

Lloyd was not surprised. ‘My mother watched the newsreel at the Aldgate Essoldo a week later,’ he recalled. ‘That plummy-voiced commentator said: “From impartial observers the police received nothing but praise.” Mam said the entire audience burst out laughing.’

Daisy was shocked by his scepticism about the news. He told her that most British papers had suppressed stories of atrocities by Franco’s army in Spain, and exaggerated any report of bad behaviour by government forces. She admitted she had swallowed Earl Fitzherbert’s view that the rebels were high-minded Christians liberating Spain from the threat of Communism. She knew nothing of mass executions, rape and looting by Franco’s men.

It seemed never to have occurred to her that newspapers owned by capitalists might play down news that reflected badly on the Conservative government, the military or businessmen, and would seize upon any incident of bad behaviour by trade unionists or left-wing parties.

Lloyd and Daisy talked about the war. There was action at last. British and French troops had landed in Norway, and were contending for control with the Germans who had done the same. The newspapers could not quite conceal the fact that it was going badly for the Allies.

Her attitude to him had changed. She no longer flirted. She was always pleased to see him, and complained if he was late arriving in the evening, and she teased him sometimes; but she was never coquettish. She told him how disappointed everyone was about the baby she had lost: Boy, Fitz, Bea, her mother in Buffalo, even her father, Lev. She could not shake the irrational feeling that she had done something shameful, and she asked if he thought that was foolish. He did not. Nothing she did was foolish to him.

Their conversation was personal but they kept their distance from one another physically. He would not exploit the extraordinary intimacy of the night she miscarried. Of course, the scene would live in his heart for ever. Wiping the blood from her thighs and her belly had not been sexy – not in the least – but it had been unbearably tender. However, it had been a medical emergency, and it did not give him permission to take liberties later. He was so afraid of giving the wrong impression about this that he was careful never to touch her.

At ten o’clock she would make them cocoa, which he loved and she said she liked, though he wondered if she was just being nice. Then he would say goodnight and go upstairs to his attic bedroom.