As they walked up the track, Dan opened the back door of the Saab to let out the dogs. Cruise came out like a bullet and stood looking around, ears cocked and nosing the air, as if already getting himself in tune with the whereabouts of interesting females. No scent was carried on the chilly wind, so he lost interest and headed off to cock his leg against a large stone at the side of the track. Biggles, on the other hand, was reluctant to get out. After the long journey, and still not totally convinced that he wasn’t being taken back to the dog home, he regarded the car as his refuge. He lay on the backseat, feet skywards, with his upper lip curled back to give the best view of his curved white teeth.

“All right, I’m not going to force you to get out,” Dan said, leaving the door open for him. “You just don’t know what you’re missing, though.”

If there had been a passing stranger that morning inquisitive enough to find out who now dwelled in this remote cottage, it would have become immediately apparent to him that the new occupants had survived their years without once putting a match to an open fire. For an hour, Dan and Josh knelt in front of the stove, trying to coax some form of incendiary reaction from a six-month-old edition of the Press & Journal that they had found lining a cupboard, a roll of lavatory paper, five unpaid parking tickets issued by the London Borough of Chelsea (courtesy of the glove compartment of the Saab), a flier announcing the impending visit of a celebrated DJ called JamHamFister to Horace’s Inferno (plucked in desperation from the pocket of Josh’s parka), and a pile of damp twigs. It was the plastic sheaths on the parking tickets that eventually got it going, but the whoops of delight that met this monumental achievement immediately turned to choking coughs of asphyxiation as the damp chimney refused to draw away the dense blue smoke. Instead, it regurgitated it out, along with a good dollop of soot, into the joyous faces of Dan and Josh.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Dan, jumping back from the stove and wiping his blackened hands down the front of his leather jacket before he knew what he was doing. “Shit!”

“Don’t worry! It’s going to go. Look!”

The smoke was now curling back into the stove, like someone exhaling cigarette smoke from his mouth and sucking it up through his nose.

“Put more wood on it, then!” Dan cried out urgently.

Josh stuffed the remainder of the pile of twigs into the fire. “Should I close the door?”

“No, just leave it for a moment.”

They stood back and watched mesmerically as the flames slowly crept up through the twigs and then began to curl up the chimney. Thirty seconds later, there was a healthy roar from the stove.