“Take a seat, Charlie,” he said. “I’ll kill you in a few minutes. It’ll be good for you.”

“Sometimes, however much you plan, however many precautions you take, something happens, and in a minute the world is changed. After that, you’re the person on the other side of that minute.”

“At first, he talked about the flowers in the garden behind his country house in Surrey. His voice still had its Midlands accent but was soft now and barely audible. He knew the plants by name and took a few minutes with each of them: ageratum, coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia. The yarrow, he said, had rose-red flowers on two-foot stems. Achillea millefolium, the plant Achilles used to heal wounds.”

“What spares us is memory,” he said. “It’s what makes us worth saving. However low we sink, whatever promise we no longer fulfill, we tell our stories. That’s why you’re so important, Charlie. You’re a guardian of our national memory.”

“Do you know what the essential problem of the piano is?” he asked. He held me so his head was a few inches from my own. His eyes darted back and forth. “It is impossible to play continuously on a piano string like a violin. The problem is to sustain a note.”

“People are complicated,” she said. “Didn’t they teach you that in biography school?”

“There’s an old adage: the sensation of drowning reminds you of everything you ever knew about swimming.”