Attractive though it now was, it had never previously crossed Tony’s mind as a possible home. He’d sat outside one of the waterside pubs with Carol Jordan once, when they’d been pretending to be normal people who could have a drink and a conversation that didn’t involve the interior life of fucked-up individuals. Another time, he’d shared a clutter of tapas with a couple of American colleagues who’d come to look round the secure mental hospital where he worked. More than once, he’d walked the canal from one side of the city to the other while he mulled over a complex case. There was something about walking that freed up his mental processes to consider options other than the obvious.

So, he was familiar with the basin. Yet he’d never wondered what it would be like to live on the water in the heart of the city until it was all that was left to him. His former house in Bradfield was gone, sold to strangers when he thought he’d finally found a place he could with conviction call home. And now that was gone too, a burned-out shell that was an uncomfortable metaphor for what had happened to the life he’d imagined he could lead there. Everywhere he looked, bloody metaphors galore.

Tony crossed the cobbled area that separated the tapas bar from the houseboat moorings and swung aboard a pretty narrowboat whose name, Steeler, unfurled on a painted gold-and-black ribbon across the stern. He unfastened the heavy padlocks that held the hatch closed and clattered down the steep steps to the cabin below. As he passed, he threw the switches that activated the boat’s electricity supply, generated by an array of solar panels. Even gloomy Bradfield skies provided enough energy for one person whose power needs were far from extravagant.

He’d been surprised by how readily he’d adapted to living in so confined a space. Life with a place for everything and everything in its place had proved unexpectedly soothing. There was no room for anything inessential; living like this had stripped his material life down to the bone, forcing him to reconsider the worth of stuff that had cluttered his life for years. OK, he didn’t love the practical necessities like emptying the toilet tank and topping up the water reservoir. Nor was he entirely at ease with the camaraderie of the water, a connectivity that seemed to draw together the most unlikely combinations of people. And he still hadn’t mastered the heating system. Now the nights were getting colder, he was growing fed up with waking in a freezing cabin. He was going to have to settle for the action of last resort – sitting down with the manual and actually reading the instructions. But in spite of all the inconveniences, he had grown comfortable in this calm, contained world.