‘Men!’ she said. ‘You’re all so cymron and addebabas, you’re conglatomy amphidoxed, all my life you’ve lambammed and simplifixed, you think you’re clancymated but you’re just jimijinxed.’ Her mouth opened and closed. ‘Hennanigged,’ it said, ‘invade and annex, aggrestificate and desficate, and all the time you’re hammamamming!’

My head spun. I stood up; my chair rocked.

‘Got to get to Dover,’ I said.

I parked on the seafront. It was a grey day and the tide was going out; I could tell by the wet sand at the water’s edge. I couldn’t get out of my seat. I felt as if I’d been punched all over my body; if I moved, my legs would buckle.

Above me, gulls mewled. I could hear them over the traffic. Down on the beach a man was jogging. He was wearing a red tracksuit and when he reached the breakwater he took it in his stride, jumping it like a steeplechaser, and disappeared.

My meeting with Lesley, I had to admit, had not been an unqualified success. How could she have shouted at me like that? What had I done to deserve such an outburst?

I tried to catch up with myself, to visualize her stuffy little shop and to remember what she had said and how I could have replied. It was no good; my mind was numb. I looked down at my carrier bag of gifts; it stuck out, like a tongue, from the cubbyhole. I was stupid to think I’d get anywhere. All I’d got, after a week’s driving, was a Bo Diddley record that I realized I’d got on an LP anyway. One of my undamaged LPs, as it happened.

I didn’t know what I wanted, but then nobody else seemed to know either. Everywhere I went I was misunderstood. Eric thought I was a dirty bugger, Lesley thought I was a male oppressor, that woman thought I was a child molester, Hilda thought—I didn’t know quite what she thought but it made me feel uneasy. The only person who hadn’t misunderstood me was my son, but then he’d never met me, had he?

I drove back to the hotel. Hilda must be annoyed by now. But when I got there they said Miss Tucker had gone out. I felt absurdly disappointed. I wanted to sit beside her, like I’d sat in the coach, and lay my head on her shoulder. I’d tell her about Lesley and she’d say: ‘Silly billy.’ She wouldn’t think I was mad, to want to speak to my own son.

It was midday. I couldn’t think what else to do, so I phoned the estate agents in Orpington. The girl replied, yes, there was a house just come on the market in Croxley Road. Three bedrooms, front and rear gardens.