Dodge lived outside the village of Walberton, near Arundel, in what I think must once have been a farm, all of whose fields had been sold off for development. (There are a lot of properties like that in West Sussex.) The main house he used for the meticulous storage of all the materials he would use in his recycling. Then there were two substantial outbuildings with corrugated-iron roofs. One was his workshop, the other where he lived and slept, in conditions of enviable minimalism.

It was there that he put a battered kettle on the salvaged cast-iron range to make the nettle tea. Normally the space only contained Dodge’s bed and a table with one chair, so I was surprised to see more furniture there. A couple of cupboards, a child’s desk and chair. I was about to comment, then realized that he probably moved completed pieces away from the dust and paint spills of his workshop.

I looked more closely at them. As ever, perfectly finished. I had given up trying to guess what Dodge’s furniture had been in its former life, his craft was so meticulous.

‘Lovely stuff,’ I commented.

‘They’re for Mary Griffin,’ he confided awkwardly. ‘Well, that is, for her little girl. I’m going to put on more Frozen stickers.’

‘Amy’ll love them,’ I said. ‘She and Mary’ll be over the moon.’

‘I feel very protective towards them,’ said Dodge. ‘Mary and Amy.’

Which was, when I thought about it, rather a strange thing for him to say.

Then it was back to the bloody invoices, whose processing had been interrupted when I’d realized the previous evening that I was nearly going to be late for Ingrid Richards. The mobile rang as soon as I started on them (having made do with toasted cheese by way of lunch). The display said: ‘Fleur’. I connected, as ever, with a slight feeling of foreboding.

‘Ellen dahling … just ringing for a little chatette …’ She knew full well how much her using words like that irritated me.

‘Maybe I could call you back this evening, Fleur …? I am working and I—’

As ever, she steamrolled her way through this. She’d never regarded my work as important. ‘I was just wondering, dahling, whether you’d heard anything from my chum Jools recently …?’

‘No,’ I replied through gritted teeth. Though perhaps ‘chum’ was better than the other word she often used, ‘girlfriend’.

‘I thought you might not have done,’ said Fleur, as ever digging away. ‘Anyway, she’s made me a very generous offer. You know she’s got that lovely flat in Herne Hill …?’

Of course, I bloody did. If I hadn’t stumped up the deposit, she wouldn’t have been able to buy it. But I said nothing.

‘And you know, dahling, that I’m really a London person …’

She kept saying this, even though her husband Kenneth, the solicitor who funded her extravagant lifestyle, was firmly based in Chichester.

‘You know, I bloom in London. I feel refreshed by the polluted air. Just wandering through the West End energizes me. I love revisiting the scenes of my former triumphs. All those First Nights, all those backstage memories … And the bars and the cafés and the restaurants and the shops … Scenes of so many liaisons … London is just me!’