The statement didn’t totally fill me with confidence, but at least I was away from St Granata’s, Morphenox rights intact. I watched as he pulled off into the traffic and was lost to view down the road.

I turned around and looked at the old building that had been my home for the past twenty-two years. I thought of wandering in, telling everyone my news and then going out for an extended gorge-crawl at all the local eateries on the seafront – kebab, fish and chips, burger, tofu, kebab – then collapsing, belly distended, armpits bulging, groaning with indigestion at three in the morning, happy and penniless.

But that was no longer an option. My entrance into this Winter would be as something I’d never been before: light.

Cardiff nights

‘ . . . Early pulse weapons had required a compressed air reservoir to function, but all modern units use a thermal battery which comprises a detonator to fire the heat source which in turn liquefies the electrolyte in order to generate the high electrical output required. The amperage generated is considerable, but limited to a fraction of a second  . . . ’

– A Guide to PVC (Portable Vortex Cannon) Weapons

‘Wow,’ said Lucy Knapp when we met over coffee and buns six weeks later. The buns were Chelsea and quite good, the coffee tasted of gritty mud. I’d invited her into the Cardiff Sector House, more to impress her than anything else. She looked around the open-plan offices, identical in layout to every other Consulate in the land, part of the SkillZero protocols. The twin portraits of Don Hector and Princess Gwendolyn XXXVIII looked down upon us in the large entrance vestibule, while the barographs hummed quietly to themselves, the traces indicating that the weather was, despite appearances, actually improving.

‘Wow,’ she said again once we were seated in the rec room. ‘Charlie Worthing, the Novice to Jack Logan. Who’d a thought it?’

‘Not me.’

‘How has it felt staying thin when everyone you know gets fat?’

‘I stopped seeing them after a while.’

‘Always the same.’

It was them who stopped seeing me, in truth. As everyone swelled to their target weight to tackle the Winter, all they saw in me was poor health and tragedy. After a month they stopped calling. All, that is, except Lucy. She’d welcomed me to the broad overwintering family, and was full of praise and sound advice.

‘A good breakfast is key,’ she said, ‘and well-fitting boots, merino socks and a reliable supply of snacks. Adequate naps are always useful, a tube of Après-Froid – and never underestimate the value of agreeable wallpaper.’

‘How so?’

‘You’d be surprised how calming a well-decorated room can be. Soft furnishings in pastel tones can be helpful, too, and a collection of soothing chamber music – but on wax cylinder rather than vinyl or tape. Electricity can be tiresomely unreliable and batteries useless in the cold.’