John takes after our father. As always, he intimidated me.

“I flew in,” I said lamely. “Quite a journey these days.”

“Isn’t it just? Kind of hot, too. Not good weather to work in.” He clapped me on the back, spreading more Paint and sweat over my shirt, thus messing up my laundry and my conscience. He led me around to the back of the house. “Mom’s indoors. Making lemonade, I think. Though it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly what she’s doing,” he said with conspiratorial gloom. “Say hello to the kids. Sven? Claudia?”

They came running from around the side of the house. They’d been playing soccer in the yard; their ball rolled plaintively along the ground, chiming softly for attention. They faced me and smiled, their eyes blank. “Uncle Michael, hi.” “Hello.”

Sven and Claudia, in their early teens, were tall, handsome, well-fed kids with matching shocks of blond hair. They were the products of John’s second marriage, to a German called Inge, now vanished after a divorce; they had their mother’s coloring, though both had something of their father’s heavyset massiveness. I always thought they looked like Cro-Magnon hunters.

For a couple of minutes I tried to make small talk with the kids about soccer. It turned out Claudia was the keenest, and even had a trial lined up for her local pro club. But as usual the talk was strained, polite,

a formality, as if I were a school inspector.

We were all wary. I’d committed a faux pas a couple of Christmases back when I’d sent them packages addressed to Sven and Claudia Poole. After the divorce my mother had taken to using her maiden name, as had I. But when he left home John switched back to my father’s name, Bazalget — I’d never known why, some row with my mother — and so these two were officially Bazalgets. John had a way of blowing up at me about such things at family occasions, spoiling the day and upsetting everybody.