I looked at the spinning bowl, thought of the invisible waves causing the molecules to go haywire.

‘It’s good to stay humble. Isn’t it?’

He scoffed at this.

‘Don’t ever be ashamed,’ he said. ‘Not of the work, the money – none of it. That’s what the little people want. To shame you. They don’t understand.’

He came close and his voice was low and conspiratorial. Even his halitosis smelled expensive, like beurre blanc and fennel.

‘The way I see it,’ he said, ‘it’s like karate. You learn karate so that you never have to use it. And no-one looks askance at a man for learning karate, do they?’

I had to agree; they didn’t.

‘That’s the thing you need to remember, Fifi,’ Roger said, pleased with his own wisdom. ‘Everyone holds their fire. It might come down to the last minute, the last second even. But no-one really wants to press the button.’

I told Connor about this view of my new position, and he was only too happy to agree.

I’d thought he would disapprove of my working at Raleigh. But weeks earlier, when I told him about the offer I’d received, and how much I’d be paid, he said, ‘Sounds great.’

I was surprised. ‘Really?’

Connor had briefly been an anarchist, and also a vegetarian. He’d gone through a period of wearing Nehru shirts. Now he was a marketing consultant, but still – I hadn’t expected so little resistance.

‘Someone’s going to do it, right?’

‘Sure.’

‘May as well be you.’

I had been gearing up for a fight, and found myself disappointed I wasn’t going to get one.

‘You don’t mind? Truly?’

He was reading the ingredients on a tub of yoghurt. He didn’t answer me. This was just when his digestive problems were turning serious. He peeled the foil lid away from the yoghurt and licked it.

‘I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,’ he said.

The call came to me because Connor was at an appointment. The appointment was about his faecal transplant, or FMT as he’d taken to calling it. The difficulty he had – the reason he’d been waiting so long – was that FMTs were usually only given to people infected by the stubborn C. diff bacteria. People could die from C. diff infections, Connor told me during one of his long, stuttering bouts on our ensuite toilet. But faecal transplants were an exceptionally effective treatment; the healthy bacteria in the donor stool could wipe out the infection. Rates of success were as high as 95 per cent.

It wasn’t easy to get an FMT, though, if you weren’t being treated for C. diff. Even Connor’s particularly volatile IBS didn’t make him an ideal candidate. Doctors were unwilling or unable – Connor was evasive on this point – to refer him to a colonoscopy centre to have the procedure.