I existed for Reg, all right. Settling back into my seat I chuckled out loud; and he could do bugger-all else about it.

I turned off the M6, travelling east, and stopped for lunch at a Happy Eater. My head still throbbed and I fancied a fry-up. Unreasonably I blamed Lesley for my drinking; if she hadn’t moved away from Windermere I wouldn’t have this hangover. You can be unreasonable when you’re alone, can’t you? There’s nobody to contradict you. I could work myself up into a lather about Lesley; she had no idea. She probably hadn’t thought about me for eleven years. Men were redundant, except for fertilization purposes. In fact, she had probably forgotten about those three or four episodes back in the mist of time. They hadn’t been that memorable.

To tell the truth, my strongest feeling had been duty. She had seemed to expect me to perform. This might sound unchivalrous, but in fact it was she who’d suggested it in the first place. We’d seen a film with Oliver Reed in it and she said he always made her randy. Besides, we’d run out of coins for her gas fire.

I squeezed out some tomato sauce from its sachet. If Oliver Reed had decided not to be an actor but, say, a chiropodist, then Edward might not be alive on this earth.

My head spun. No, she had probably forgotten all about it. Women are always forgetting that it was a bloke who helped them to do something in the first place; I’d noticed that when I was a driving instructor. By now she probably believed she’d had Edward by Immaculate Conception. Years had passed in the company of women. But she hadn’t reckoned on her hormones—up had popped Barry and she was back to square one, manwise.

My waitress was very young; she looked as pure as a milkmaid, with a face shiny as nature intended. Why couldn’t a simple girl fall in love with me? She would bring me apple pie, as this girl did, and she’d say If you died, I would die too.

Eleni had seemed simple. Nobody could have called her an intellectual. She’d liked dancing and clothes and winning soft toys at fairgrounds. But looks are treacherous. She hadn’t been simple at all. She had spent six years playing a series of such complicated games and manoeuvres that if she’d patented them she’d be a millionairess. Trivial Pursuits, I would have called them, if somebody else hadn’t thought of it first.

There was a film where Alan Bates was a shepherd, and he wanted Julie Christie to marry him. Why? she asked. ‘Because when you look up, I’ll be here,’ he said. ‘And when I look up, you’ll be here.’

I paid the bill and left, casting a last glance at the waitress. She smiled back. When I looked up she had been there, but not for long.

I climbed into the driving seat. To my left, a ploughed field stretched into the distance. It was so large that it dissolved in fog. Far from the Madding Crowd; that was the name of the film.