‘So,’ I said, deliberately breaking eye contact and looking around me, ‘this is your empire.’

‘Allow me to show you around, madam.’

The barn was workmanlike and tidy, the space taken up by an enormous saw bench and stacks of furniture in various stages of restoration. Chisels and files hung in specially fitted racks on the walls and there were plastic bins for wood shavings and sawdust. Rows of tightly fitted tins stood on the shelves and there was a strong smell of resin, beeswax and spirit varnish. There was also an oil painting on an easel, of a barge with red sails on a swelling grey sea, its colours bright and fresh.

‘Is this a genuine Arnold Bishop?’ I asked.

Paul grinned. ‘The very same.’

‘Where’s the Darkolene?’

He pointed to a battered, ancient-looking tin with dribbles of dried, dark-brown varnish down the side. ‘That’s my last one. I’m starting to panic.’

Chaos was allowed to reign in one corner only. Dirty coffee mugs jostled for space on a wooden draining board next to a cracked china sink, with an old kettle, an exploded bag of sugar and half-opened packets of biscuits.

‘I don’t think much of the catering arrangements,’ I told him frankly.

‘What’s up here?’ I climbed a wooden ladder to an old hayloft but there was nothing to see but more furniture.

Back down on ground level, I went through the little wooden door Paul had come through earlier. It took me into a lean-to with a glass skylight in a corrugated metal roof. The concrete floor was shiny with wetness, the powerful hose Paul had been using lying like a huge serpent on the concrete. Beneath the skylight stood a large metal tank, about the size of a builder’s skip. ‘Is this the stripping tank?’ I had to stand on tiptoe to peer in. It was half full of cold, clear liquid.

‘Careful!’ Paul warned me, following me through the door. ‘Don’t get too close.’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Sodium hydroxide,’ he said, stooping to coil up the hose. ‘Caustic soda.’

‘Nasty stuff! Isn’t it bad for old furniture?’ I asked. ‘Doesn’t it ruin the wood?’

He laughed, coiling the hose over a reel mounted on the wall. Its brass nozzle drizzled slightly and he gave a final turn to a large tap on the wall beside it, making sure the water was turned off. Then he came over to join me by the tank. ‘Leave anything in too long and it’ll fall to pieces. It dissolves all the glue in the joints. I heat the tank first, then things don’t have to stay in so long, and it doesn’t damage the wood so much. I never use it for the good stuff.’ He pointed to a pine cupboard lying on its side on the wet concrete. ‘I’ve just taken that out. I was rinsing it off when you called.’