He sat down some distance away from me on another daybed and I kept my head down, ensuring that my eyes did not make contact with his. I might not have known what he looked like prior to studying the newspaper image, but I was quite sure he would have recognised me, especially if he’d been able to see the zigzag join on my arm between the old and the new.

After a few minutes, one of the staff, a young woman in a white tunic, came into the gallery and shouted for Mr Valance. Laura, the masseuse, I assumed.

With some considerable difficulty, he heaved himself to his feet off the low bed and followed Laura into one of the treatment rooms for his fifty-minute massage.

Poor girl, I thought, having to massage all that flab.

Chico then came into view, also with a white towel wrapped round his waist. He briefly put up a thumb, then made a zero sign with his thumb and forefinger, before disappearing again.

Good, I thought. There was no one else here with Valance. He had arrived alone. He had obviously gone straight into the magnificently restored Victorian changing room and, from there, directly to the treatment area. Perhaps he would stay for a steam bath afterward, and to use the other facilities, or maybe he would simply get dressed again and go straight home.

But I was ready for both eventualities.

The Turkish Baths in Harrogate are something of an anachronism. From the outside, the building looks more like a dour, grey, north-country mausoleum. You even have to enter through a somewhat underwhelming basement entrance more akin to that of a crypt than of a pleasure palace. But once you step inside, you are transported from thoughts of death to the delights of Oriental life, with multiple Moorish arches and multicoloured glazed tiled walls in geometric Eastern patterns. Rich walnut-coloured wooden furniture abounds and the floors are of sparkling blue, red and yellow terrazzo mosaics, while exotic golden lanterns hang from the roof. There are Islamic-inspired arabesques painted on the ceilings to delight the eye, interspersed with extravagant hexagonal multipaned skylights.

Overall, it feels like you have been whisked away, as if by a magic carpet, from a drab Yorkshire afternoon to some Middle Eastern timeless paradise.

Only an ornate wooden screen surmounted by an impressive white-faced circular clock gives any indication of the passage of the hours as one moves from the Frigidarium, the cool room, to the Tepidarium, and then to the Caldarium. For the fearless, there is a final step to the Laconium, the very hottest room, kept at seventy-five degrees Celsius, before an invigorating immersion into the icy plunge pool—all of it designed to cleanse both the body and the spirit.