‘Close to the illness?’ I was only half listening because I was very hungover and reading the menu to see which, if any, of the foods I could contemplate eating without my stomach giving a wrench of disgust.

‘To IT.’ Hunter’s eyes scanned me eagerly for a response. ‘Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘None.’

‘There’s a thin membrane between this world and our real spiritual lives, and when you become ill, that membrane gets stretched very thin.’

‘If you say so,’ I said pettishly.

‘Not because I say so.’ Hunter smiled and picked up his menu. ‘I get it: this conversation is embarrassing you.’

He was only partly right. I was preoccupied with the issue of the letters, but in general there was nothing I felt like discussing less than the alleged membrane between myself and the spirit world. It smacked of table-tapping, ectoplasm, gimmicky séances, sad people who find reality insufficient, and I said something along these lines to Hunter.

My scepticism not only did not put Hunter off, it positively incited him, the way coquettish indifference is supposed to provoke ardour in a would-be lover.

‘Reality isn’t insufficient,’ he insisted. ‘Reality is greater than you can have any inkling of. I’m speaking only of the real. The réal – you know what it means in Spanish, of course. Réal is royal. Reality is king.’

Then he said something strange, the significance of which didn’t dawn on me until much later. He looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘Have you known much death, Nicholas?’

It was a question I didn’t feel like exploring with him, not then, probably not ever.

My father was technically a Victorian. He was born in 1899 and was in his seventies when I was conceived. I remember him in my early childhood as he subsided into old age, playing the piano less and less, but always taking pleasure in his teaching. He died in 1985, peacefully, at home.

It was a relief for me to learn that while women are born with a full complement of eggs in their ovaries, men generate fresh sperm throughout their lives. But I have often wondered if a lot about my sister and myself is explained by the fact that we were the belated product of nineteenth-century testicles.

My mother was more than forty years younger than my father. At his funeral, my sister and I met various middle-aged half-siblings, who had children around our age. My mother died suddenly when I was at graduate school. She had been predeceased by my sister Emily who died of leukaemia at the absurdly young age of nineteen.

Since I was very young, I’ve known what it is to live under the shadow of death, in the expectation of bereavement; to look ahead and experience the vertiginous sense of being suspended in time. For all our differences, Hunter and I had this in common. And it was only much later, when I began finally to acknowledge our unexpected kinship, that I began to understand him.

But for now I brushed his question aside.

‘Speaking of reality, Hunter,’ I said. ‘We need to discuss these forgeries.’

That word, forgeries, caught Hunter in the act of swallowing a sip of water. He pursed his lips as though he’d been surprised by something extremely hot and wagged his finger at me until it cleared his throat. ‘Not forgeries.’

‘Not forgeries? What are you talking about? I’ve seen them.’

‘I just want to reassure you, there’s no question of their being forgeries.’

‘Now I’m puzzled,’ I said. ‘I thought I was supposed to be advising you about that.’

‘It all depends what you mean by a forgery,’ Hunter said mysteriously.

We suspended our discussion while the waiter came to take our order. I declined to order any food, as much from principle as indisposition: I had already resolved to tear up Hunter’s cheque. Hunter said he’d have seared scallops and rack of saltmarsh lamb. Looking back, I’m certain he was rattled, because he’d forgotten to bring his copper flask of special water.

‘What I mean by a forgery’, I said, when the waiter had gone, ‘is a falsified document that is intended to deceive someone. I saw box after box of bogus Johnson material in Malevin’s house.’

‘But none that he was actually intending to sell,’ said Hunter, doing his best to assume a got-you face.

‘Well, one of the letters was intended for you. I’ve no idea who the other material was intended for.’

‘If it’s not intended to deceive anyone, is it still a forgery?’

‘You think Malevin is creating this stuff as a kind of hobby? To amuse himself?’

‘I understand your anger,’ said Hunter, bowing the lowest, most soothing strings of his voice. ‘And I respect it. I give you my word that Sinan’s deceit – if that’s the right word – wasn’t intentional. You really don’t need to worry about it any more than that. You’ve been more than conscientious. Nicholas, I’ve got to ask you to just let this go.’

‘Let it go? This is serious counterfeiting. As an academic, how could I live with myself if I let Johnson’s legacy be cheapened by a load of fakes? I respect reality as much as you do. More, apparently.’ I found myself surprisingly invigorated by my sense of outrage.

Hunter rapped his fingers on the table top and sighed through his nostrils. ‘Okay. Look: frankly, I was hoping that a night’s sleep and my reassurance that this is all above board would be enough to persuade you to ease up, but I see you’ve decided to play the crusader card.’ He pulled his phone out of his jacket. ‘Give me one second.’ He turned away slightly from the table to make the call. ‘Hey. I’m with Nicholas now. He’s still worried about the stuff.’ There was a pause while he listened. ‘We’ll be straight over.’

He stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

I was impressed in spite of everything that Hunter was able to settle the matter of the pending food order with a single glance to the maître d’.

‘We’ll walk,’ said Hunter. ‘It’ll give me a chance to explain.’

The sun was breaking through after a morning of heavy showers as we negotiated the slick, rain-darkened streets between our abortive lunch on Piccadilly and St James’s Square. Duke Street and Jermyn Street seemed to grow taller in the sunlight, stretching skywards like the nave and transept of a gold-roofed cathedral.

Finally, something in Hunter seemed to relent. He lowered his head. ‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ he said, disarmingly. ‘The bulk of that material is not by Johnson at all.’

‘Then you know who forged it?’

‘It wasn’t forged. It was written by Vera Telauga’s brother Jack.’

‘Come on, Hunter.’ I rolled my eyes at him. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence. That’s pure sophistry.’

‘I spent two semesters at law school before I signed my first band,’ said Hunter. ‘For a crime to be committed, there has to be mens rea, criminal intent. Sinan never intended to sell any of those documents. I think you’ll understand all this better once you’ve had the chance to meet Jack Telauga.’ Hunter refolded his silk scarf and tucked its ends inside his overcoat. ‘He’s a savant. I’ve never seen anything like it. You can’t get a word out of him in conversation. He sits there doing nothing, barely able to do up his own laces – I think Vera has to bathe him. But put a pen in his hand and this is what comes out.’

‘I know what a savant is,’ I said tartly. ‘But I don’t believe you.’

‘Which is why Sinan and I concocted our story about the papers. I wouldn’t buy anything from Sinan – more to the point, why would he need to sell? You’ve seen his house. Sinan is a good guy. He’s taken care of Vera and her brother for years. Jack’s been checked out by all kinds of specialists. He’s physically fine, but he’s barely there mentally. Sinan didn’t even know he could read. We have no idea how he’s able to produce this work. It was my idea to show the material to a Johnson expert, to see what a professional made of it. I got Googling and a few names came up. You were the first to bite. So, we had our lunch. You know the rest. Sinan and I never wanted you to look at the originals, but you’re so conscientious.’