Once I’d soaped and scrubbed twice I ran a number-two clipper through my felted hair and dumped the tangled mass in the bin. I stopped frequently to stretch the gnawing stiffness from my limbs, and once I’d combed all over to remove the lice eggs, eight night-worms and a half-dozen hook-daddies, I stood under the gloriously hot water and tried to push down a sense of rising panic and failure. After ten minutes and with no positive thoughts about my current predicament, I stepped out, gazed at my scrawny body in the mirror, then clipped my nails short, felt my teeth for any telltale signs of decay or looseness, and slipped on a pair of Suzy’s jogging trousers and a T-shirt. I then went to the window to peer at the Winter, something I’d never witnessed before.

The landscape was utterly without colour. A grey overcast stretched to the mountains, the town and country draped in white, the hard edges of the buildings rounded and softened by the heaps of accreted snow. There was barely any movement; the only sign of life was half a dozen dog-head buzzards wheeling tightly over some waste ground behind the Siddons.

‘They’ll be circling the landfill,’ said Jonesy, who had arrived by my side. ‘We dumped a couple of winsomniacs up there a few days ago; things aren’t freezing as quickly so the scent carries.’

‘The thaw?’ I asked.

‘No, just the end of a milder spell. There’s worse weather on the way – a pretty big one in a couple of days: fifty below freezing, they say. The porters will be pulling the rods in preparation. We’ll want to be inside when it hits. Breakfast is ready.’

We sat down at the table. There was everything: bacon, beans, two kippers, buttered toast, mushrooms, sausage and sauté potatoes. Despite the joyous bounty of the spread, everything was either long-life, tinned or dry-packed. Nothing is fresh in the Winter, they say – except the wind.

We tucked in; Jonesy had made almost the same size for herself.

‘This is nice,’ she said.

She looked at me and smiled, then patted my hand in an oddly affectionate manner, and left hers resting on mine. It was her tattered hand, all livid scar tissue and string-sized stitch marks. I didn’t move my hand away through not wanting to offend, so waited until she moved her hand to pass me the salt, and then elected to keep my hands off the table in future.

‘It’s sort of like being long-partnered,’ she added.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Sort of like being long-partnered,’ she repeated, ‘sitting here together, enjoying our retirement and sharing a sense of past histories together, a warm and cosy sense of familiarity.’

The alarm bells started ringing.

‘I’m  . . . not sure I follow you. Retirement sounds nice, but hardly realistic.’