I step through the door and I’m not prepared for the air inside. It hasn’t changed. The whole place smells exactly the way it always did and now I remember that he did the cooking, that he smoked a pipe with tobacco from some upmarket shop in London, that it was his pomade that lingered in the hall because his study was on the ground floor. The Old Girl and Stella shared a work room in the attic because they loved the views and because they could throw one another insoluble problems and little jokes. I had a spot—just a recliner, no desk—in the corner, and was considered the most privileged of men.