‘Anyway, I got to know him and I found out he did TT racing. Well, I’d had a bike too, a Norton, and so we started talking bikes. He’d even gone across America on a Harley Davidson; he was really interesting. So we ended up mates. She lay in the sun and got so huffy, she wouldn’t let me rub in her suntan oil. She wouldn’t even let him. She went off and tried her luck with the barman, but it was Saturday by then and we were leaving Sunday.

‘I tried to joke her out of it. We were packing up, the Sunday, and I pointed to all our bits of food we were leaving behind, and I pretended to be our maid’s husband, having dinner that evening. “Ole!” I said, “It’sa Sunday again, it’sa baked beans again, it’sa tomato ketchup and a pineapple chunks, o benissimo! All washed down with half a canna Seven Uppa and Palmolive Washing Up Liquido!” She just said: “Don’t be so childish.”’

I paused. ‘I met her on a beach, you see. That’s when I fell in love with her.’ I looked at my hands on the wheel. ‘Sometimes, when we went on holiday, I thought it would be all right. It would be like that first day. She ran across the sand, then. Everything was new. You keep on thinking that something will do the trick. If you paint the lounge, if you have a child, if you go to Toronto.’

‘Toronto?’

If. If only I had a son. You sat back and dreamed. If only was the way I did it.

I indicated left and we drove round the interchange, joining the M25. It was one o’clock. I changed gear and we cruised along, in the dark. We hadn’t seen a car for so long that I felt we were the last two people alive. Everyone else had vanished and our coach was the only moving object in Britain.

‘She was so moody—for no reason, honest. I hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d sulk for days, then suddenly she’d be all excited and say let’s build a sauna, it’ll change our lives, we’ll be happy then. So I’d send off for the brochures but when they arrived she’d gone off the idea, she’d forgotten all about it, and she said I was so boring, always fiddling with the house, what good did that do?’

‘Flapjack?’ Hilda rummaged in her carrier bag. She passed me one and I munched it. It was restful, talking to her. It was like talking to an aunt at bedtime, telling her about your day. A long, long day.

‘She said I wasn’t interested in her dancing, but what can you say about dancing?’ I asked. ‘You do it, you don’t talk about it.’

‘You could talk to that chap about bikes.’