“No, not at all. This is just a bit of a freak. The forecast is quite good for tomorrow.” She glanced across at him. “So if you do stick around for another day, you won’t be needing to invest in an unglamorous article like my anorak.”

Dan looked down at his attire. The sodden leather jacket was now beginning to steam in the heat of the van and his damp jeans felt warm against his skin. Only his foot inside its greasy loafer refused to give any indication that it was thawing out. “I had no idea what to expect,” he said quietly.

“Obviously not,” Katie laughed.

Dan bit at his lip. “Okay, point taken.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. It was just that you did look quite out of place on the platform back there.”

“Just as you would have done if you had arrived at Euston with nothing but your nose revealed to the world.”

“Maybe. I could have been taken for some eccentric Muslim woman, though.”

Katie accelerated the van towards a set of traffic lights that had just changed from green to amber. She thought about crossing them, but at the last moment slammed her foot on the brakes, skidding the van to a halt. Dan felt a crashing blow on the back of his head and a millisecond later found himself hemmed in by long rolls of brightly coloured fabric.

“Heavens, are you all right?” Katie asked with concern as she pushed back the rolls into the rear of the van. “I hadn’t realized that they were still there. They should have been taken into the factory last night.”

Dan decided against passing comment about how his head felt. The dull thumping simply blended itself into his overall feeling of sheer discomfort. “Are we going there now?”

“Yes. It’s on a small industrial estate just outside town. It’s not very far away.”

Ten minutes later, they crossed over an unmanned level crossing and drove through a set of gates beside which stood a large white sign announcing that they were entering the Cruach Industrial Estate. The road weaved through a line of long, low prefabricated units, the majority of which had untidy stacks of fish boxes and pallets outside their large blue doors. These were slid closed against the bite of the wind blowing in across the choppy waters of the sea loch, on the exposed shores of which the industrial estate was situated.

Katie pulled the van to a halt outside an unmarked building and switched off the engine. “This is it then. Home to my empire.”

“Looks good,” Dan replied, trying to sound enthusiastic as he surveyed the rusting pillars that supported the ineffectual porch above the glass-paneled entrance door, its paintwork weathered and peeling.