When she held the money out to him he tried to protest, but she shook her head. ‘Better take it, just in case you decide to keep on running. I’m not holding you to anything.’ She went to the wardrobe and produced an old single-breasted raincoat. ‘And this. It was my father’s. No use to him now.’

Suddenly she was the tough Yorkshire lass again, rough, competent, completely unsentimental. ‘Now you’d better get out of here.’

He pulled on the coat and she led the way into the passageway. The Gunner started towards the stairs and she jerked his sleeve.

‘I’ve got a better way.’

He followed her up another flight of stairs, passing several doors which obviously led to upper rooms. At the top, they were confronted by a heavier door bolted on the inside and protected by a sheet of iron against burglars.

She eased back the bolts and the door swung open in the wind giving him a view of a flat roof between two high gables. There was a rail at one end and on the other side of it the roof sloped to the yard below.

‘If you scramble over the gable end,’ she said, pointing to the left, ‘you can slide down the other side to the flat roof of a metalworks next door. Nothing to it for you – I’ve done it myself when I was a kid. You’ll find a fire escape that’ll take you all the way down into the next alley.’

He stared at her dumbly, rain blowing in through the open doorway, unable to think of anything to say. She gave him a sudden fierce push that sent him out into the open.

‘Go on – get moving, you bloody fool,’ she said and slammed the door.

He had never felt so utterly desolate, so completely cut-off from everything in his life. It was as if he had left everything worth having back there behind that iron door and there was nothing he could do about it. Not a damned thing.

He followed her instructions to the letter and a minute or so later hurried along the alley on the far side and turned into the street at the end.

He kept on walking in a kind of daze, his mind elsewhere, turning from one street into the other in the heavy rain. About ten minutes later he found himself on the edge of Jubilee Park. He went in through a corner entrance, past the enigmatic statue of good Queen Victoria, orb in one hand and sceptre in the other, and walked aimlessly into the heart of the park.