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Peter gave a new poem to her to read first. He handed it to her and followed her eye movements as she read it. Then he hung on her every word as she gave her judgement. Usually she thought for a moment, then came out with a review you could have put straight in the paper. All the references, all the images, all the associations—she combined them all into an opinion that was, by the way, invariably positive, with occasional suggestions for a slight improvement or adjustment. Peter always accepted them, at least at first.

‘Sometimes she finds something that I haven’t consciously put in myself at all,’ he said. ‘That happens a lot with poems, of course. My father also interprets for all he’s worth. Sometimes he creases me up with all the things he reads into it. But with her, there’s something strange going on. It’s not her interpretations, it’s my encoding that she unravels. She tells me why I’ve written things in a certain way, and she’s very often right. Sometimes she gives me a nasty fright, because she says things I would have preferred not to know.’