‘Easy?’ He arches an eyebrow.

‘Oh come on, you know what I mean. You live alone. You don’t know how it is, being with someone.’

‘No, I don’t, and I wish I did.’

‘I don’t know. The thought of her leaving … I don’t know. It’s as if she’s waiting for me to make a move. She must know that I know.’

Of course she does. It is kind of obvious that you do.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I looked at his lips moving.

‘You hardly ever talk, except to me. You walk around like you’re treading on eggshells. You walk around like a zombie, if you want to know the truth. As much fun as a turd in a punchbowl. I’m surprised she hasn’t left you anyway.’

He held out the joint to me but I got up and walked out, slamming the door so I could feel the rush of air. I walked down to the river where swans bobbed in the wake of a late booze-cruiser and I smoked a cigarette, watching my freezing breath mingle with the smoke. The time, I thought, has perhaps come. This limbo, this lovelessness, seemed endless. I wanted my life back, wanted to be complacent, wanted to be as whole as I could be … but what if she left me? What then? The circular argument revolved within me. I realised I was tired, tired of the argument, tired of living this silent, Sonja-less life. Spinning the cigarette butt out into the water, the swans moving towards the ripples it made, I stamped my feet to shake off the cold and imagined eggshells splintering.

Of course I apologised to Ian in my shambolic way the next day. He smiled and waved his hand - nothing, it’s nothing; it’s everything, I thought — and he turned back to his furnace.

And here I am today, aching, wrestling with the banister of a deck on Cotham Grove, forcing it into place, taking short cuts, wedging spindles with shavings and pegs into hastily cut holes. My hands betray me, my skills betray me. Mr Bodge has come to visit — and come to visit in the worst possible place, for the house on Cotham Grove is owned by Mrs Harpy and her husband. Aptly named, indeed. She is a strikingly attractive blonde woman in her late thirties, beautifully groomed, her clothes rustle and fall just so, in shades of olive and taupe, cut on the bias. She is always expensively shod, even when she treads gingerly through the sawdust and shavings, the dry, smoking puddles of fine Blue Circle cement dust rising like steam round her ankles, to comment on an aspect of the construction of her two-storey oak and granite deck, with its lashings of cherry. She has eyes of emerald, finely angled bones and a soft voice, apparently, like honey. She is the psychobitch customer from hell.

I sit on the top step, notice that it shifts a little to the left (the tenon has been shaved a tad too small) and light a cigarette, pour coffee from my flask, steam billowing in the cold air. I lift my right hand, the hand that was thrown against the burning exhaust pipe of a Morris Minor twenty-eight years before, and begin to stretch and flex it. In cold weather it hurts, tends to cramp. I wrap it round the cup to warm it. I sit looking out at the autumn-blasted garden, dead now, fallen to earth apart from the laurel tree in the corner. I’m turning over in my mind the questions I will ask Sonja, picking my words, examining them as closely as Merboy examined pebbles on a beach, selecting some and rejecting others. I test the words for their fit, their feel in my hands and mouth. Which word should be the first?