It took three men to pull me off Martin Sawyer’s limp body all those years ago, as his blood dribbled slowly over the asphalt of the road in Noss Mayo. Eddie Lamble was long gone. I remember the sound of Martin Sawyer trying to breathe through his mouth, his lips swollen by my fists, as swollen as if they’d been stung by wasps. He looked up at me through closing, purple eyes and sighed and a bubble of blood burst beautifully in the gap between his front teeth, its filmy surface catching the afternoon sun.

Sonja’s family are a brooding, blond bunch. I looked forward so much to meeting them, looked forward to impressing them. I wanted to be the attentive son-in-law, mature beyond his years, nurturing and supporting their daughter. They came to visit one Christmas, a couple of years after we were married, and Sonja and I collected them from the station in our secondhand Ford Cortina III estate. I pulled up in front of Temple Meads (trying not to think of the time, twenty-one years before, when my mother had arrived there, preparing herself to beg) and braked in astonishment. There were so many of them, and so many cases. They looked scared, alien in ill-fitting suits and dated skirts. Around them was a lake of luggage.

‘Jesus Christ!’ I turned to Sonja. ‘Are they visiting or defecting?’

‘It’s the first time they’ve been away. Don’t be rude.’ But even she looked a tad glassy-eyed.

It took three trips to transport all the people and cases and boxes. I walked into our tiny flat with the last case and they were all standing in our box-like living room, touching things: ornaments, books, TV, pictures. I thought for a mad moment that they were all blind. Why else finger everything? One of Sonja’s sisters, Olga, was even touching the walls, turning her fingers round the corners. I decided to take control, slapping my hands together and booming, ‘Well, who’s for a drink?’

They all stopped their fingering to look at me blankly before turning to Sonja to speak in their own language. I scanned their faces one by one, looking for recognition and found none, so I got a beer from the fridge and went to bed. Hours later Sonja joined me, quite drunk on vodka. She woke me by gently pulling the tip of my beard and kissing me, her tongue hot with lemon-scented raw alcohol.

‘Well?’ I asked.

‘They like you, Special.’ She held her hands up to admire the rings she wore — a sure sign of drunkenness. ‘How can they? They didn’t even speak to me.’

‘Well, they don’t speak English.’

‘Right.’

The next day I went to stay with Ian in his flat. We spent the day fishing at Chew Magna and now that’s what I do whenever her family arrive: I make three trips to take them to our house and then I go to stay with Ian. We walk and work, have drinks and visit restaurants. We drive out to Hay-on-Wye, go down to Constantine Bay, maybe go camping in the Gower. It’s an easy, silent relationship. Then, when it is time, I go back to the house — which by now smells of black butter, fish and mushroom stew - and run three trips to Temple Meads. Before they slip away, like blond wraiths, Sonja’s family bow slightly stiffly towards me and I find myself bowing in return. This exchange is wordless — how could it be otherwise?