One question always bothers me. When I looked at Sonja’s family that first time I was struck by how bleached, how angular they all were. Yet Sonja is a luscious woman, with deep blonde hair and grey eyes, her body soft and curved. Did a dog get over the wall? I look at Sonja’s mother and her flat, pale blue eyes slide away from my stare.

I’ve always enjoyed visiting Ian in his workshop; in fact, I go out of my way to drop in on him in his furnace-filled room on Cumberland Road. I like walking in and there he is, stripped to the waist, dripping with sweat, squinting and blinking as it runs into his eyes. He tips his visor on to his forehead, wiping his face with a cloth, and he looks as if he’s been wearing the helmet of a diving suit made at the turn of the century, a heavy, curved mask in front of his face.

Today Ian pulls off the visor when I enter and glugs water from a bottle, looking at me strangely, almost speculatively.

‘I came to pick up the plans for Hampton Road,’ I say. He nods towards the desk and I rummage about among the hammers, bits and tongs until I find the papers. ‘When shall I tell her we can start?’

Ian shrugs, wipes his face with a rag. ‘Next Wednesday?’ He picks up a cold chisel and turns it in his hands. ‘Special …’

Yes?’

Ian stares at the blue flame hissing from the solder. ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’

You OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ And I thought he said then, ‘It’s not me, it’s you.’ But his lips didn’t move.

It was Sonja who taught me to dance. She pulled me to my feet one evening in our first tiny basement flat in Kingsdown, the deposit paid for by my second year of deck-building, and I stood foolish and bear-like as she put a record on the turntable. Then she turned to me and took my hands.

‘Watch my feet.’ She began to move, graceful and balanced.

I’d always loved to watch her dance but I had never thought to join her.

‘Give me your hands,’ she said, and took my callused hands in hers. She pulled me to her and guided me round the room. She smiled up at me and pressed herself against the length of my body. Gradually I learned to follow her, to mirror her movements as she danced to the music, to the rhythms.

‘There,’ she said, laughing, ‘you can dance, you see?’

I felt stupidly accomplished, proud of doing something a five-year-old could do. That’s how Sonja made me feel. We’ve danced through our life together: tiny, crab-like dances in our early flats and houses, then swirling across the vast polished floors of this house, from room to room, our feet synchronised, hands locked. I’ve sometimes wondered what people think as they glance in through the windows to see us swooping about, laughing and giggling.