The countryside flattened out. There were signs for Warrington and Wigan again. The farms changed from stone to brick; they looked sootier and meaner. Just two days ago I had noticed the opposite phenomenon.

Why had they gone to Spalding? Nobody went to Spalding. Reg ran a trip to the Flower Festival once a year but I had never been. Despite my seaside dream, I knew there was no beach in the vicinity for Barry’s boats. He must have another business on the go. I tried to picture Lesley as a barmaid, and failed. How could that Lesley wear a frilly blouse and flirt with travelling salesmen? She hadn’t taken a sociology degree to pull pints. By now she must have changed out of all recognition; it wasn’t just my son who was altering with the years.

There’s a saying, isn’t there: To travel hopefully is better than to arrive. I slowed down to a steady 50 mph; the longer it took the better. I had no idea what I was going to do when I found them; what I had dreaded had happened. I wouldn’t simply find a woman and a child. However hostile she might be, there was something incomplete about that sort of set-up. In some small way, even if just to change a plug, they might have needed me. But now I was driving towards a complete family. I had seen a lion family on TV. What did they do to a rogue male who appeared on their territory, smelling wrong? They tore him to bits.

The lorry in front proclaimed Fresh Food Costs Less at Sainsbury’s. I sluiced my windscreen and nibbled some Kendal Mint Cake. I passed a car, it had wedding ribbons on it, and one had come loose; it flapped in the wind. Robbie’s family had unsettled me. However detumescing—and I’m a bit of an expert on that—there was something about children that changed a couple and made them somehow … What was it? Human. As faulty as before but somehow weathered. Members of the human race. Oh I don’t know. All I knew was that Eleni and I hadn’t been like that. And, by now, perhaps Barry and Lesley were.

At eleven o’clock I stopped for petrol. I was well south of Manchester. I climbed down, grunting. My back ached. My coach was looking dirty by now—dust on its paintwork and mud, from country lanes, spattered above its wheels. For some reason this pleased me; it was proof that I was doing something.

But when I went in to pay they wouldn’t take my card. The girl hesitated, reading something on her computer, and then she went over to the bloke at the next till. He looked at me as if I’d molested his daughter, then he stepped over and said: ‘I’m afraid we cannot accept this.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to pay by other means.’

Reg had frozen my credit. I was furious, of course—I had to pay with my own money. But in a weird way I suddenly felt normal. Until now I’d suspected that nobody had even noticed I’d gone. Eleni hadn’t done anything about the house; Costas had sounded his usual benign self and had misunderstood me. I had felt forgotten by the world. I know that’s illogical, when I’d only been away four days, but it’s surprising how quickly, once you’re adrift, you feel you don’t exist.