‘I’m a carpenter.’ I held out my giant hands, showing her the scars of my profession, my badges of honour. ‘What was I like, Mrs Bennet? When I was here, what was I like?’

Mrs Bennet leaned against the wall and looked over the creek, sparking with sun on the shallow water. She turned back to me. ‘You were a wild boy. Always in trouble. Always. But there was something … I don’t know. No one could stay angry with you for long. Do you remember when you had a fight in the back garden with some friends and you knocked down our fence? You came round straight away and apologised. You didn’t pretend it wasn’t you and then you tried to fix it.’ She smiled again. ‘You made a pretty poor fist of it, I have to say. George spent the next week putting it right but only when you were at school so you wouldn’t know. I hope you’re a better carpenter now.’

‘So do I.’

‘George, bless his soul, died many years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. He liked you. He was devastated when we found out about … about what happened.’ She pushed herself off the wall and reached for the handle of the trolley. ‘Well, I must make a move while the tide’s right.’

I offered to give her a lift into Newton Ferrers but she said it would be quicker to walk, waving at the concrete walkways across the creeks revealed at low tide. I kissed her soft, papery cheek and she hugged me again.

‘Look after yourself, John. God bless.’ She walked away, head bowed, thinking no doubt of other times, when George had walked with her.

I set off along the lane, past the ferry stop, past the few houses half buried by trees on the creek’s edge. I knew where I was going, and when I stood on Cellar’s Beach, looking out over Great Mew, standing where Merboy had when he threw the wendletrap back into the water, I thought of Mrs Bennet’s generosity. How she had sat on that wall, wrapped against the cold, making sure nothing bad happened to him.

The operation to place the implant is, surprisingly, less painful, less intrusive, than the myringoplasty. Again I’m woken by the Tobagonian nurse, again I have cotton wool tufting from my ears, and tender bumps where the tiny transmitters are hidden beneath skin. But there are no scars inches long, no stiff neck. I’m sent home with a course of pills to prevent rejection and once again I lie on the sofa, Sonja appearing and disappearing bearing delicacies. When I have the stitches out the doctor plasters gauze beneath my ears to catch any weeping blood and plasma. For six weeks I will have to walk around with the gauze stuck to my face and then they’ll tune in the electrodes floating in my head.

Sonja spends two of these weeks with her family in Estonia and for fourteen nights I lie in our bed alone, thinking. One day when I’m driving down Trenchard Street I see the Blind Man and his dog. I have no desire to stop the car and run towards him, roaring. My ears weep as I drive on.