“Unless it’s time to stop, I might as well.”

“Mummy wrote to Mr. Garbel and said how interesting she found his letter.”

“Did you, Mummy?”

“One has to be polite,” Troy muttered and laid a thin stroke of rose on the mouth of Ricky’s portrait.

“And he wrote back sending her three used bus tickets and a used train ticket.”

“Does she collect them?”

“Mr. Garbel thought she would like to know that they were his tickets punched by guards and conductors all for him. He also sends her beautifully coloured postcards of the Maritime Alps.”

“What’s that? May I have them?”

“…with arrows pointing to where his house would be if you could see it and to where the road goes to a house he sometimes visits only the house is off the postcard.”

“Like a picture puzzle, sort of?”

“Sort of. And he tells Mummy how, when he was young and doing chemistry at Cambridge, he almost met her great-aunt who was his second cousin once removed.”

“Did he have a shop?”

“No, he’s a special kind of chemist without a shop. When he sends Mummy presents of used tickets and old newspapers he writes on them: ‘Sent by P. E. Garbel, 16 Rue des Violettes, Roqueville, to Mrs. Agatha Alleyn (née Troy) daughter of Stephen and Harriet Troy (née Baynton).’ ”

“That’s you, isn’t it, Mummy? What else?”

“Is it possible, Ricky,” asked his wondering father, “that you find this interesting?”

“Yes,” said Ricky. “I like it. Does he mention me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or you?”

“He suggests that Mummy might care to read parts of his letter to me.”

“May we go and see him?”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “As a matter of fact I think we may.”

Troy turned from her work and gaped at her husband. “What can you mean?” she exclaimed.