‘My Mum’s never been religious. Unless you count the bingo? She’s fairly evangelical down her local Mecca.’ I shift when he doesn’t respond to my ill-timed quip. ‘You said you moved away?’ I ask, bringing us back to his story.‘Yes. Almost overnight. For several months before that, Susan and I had been courting. Sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it, but that’s what you did. The church approved certain levels of relationship and that was where we were at. They didn’t realise how we talked. We kept it secret. Just for us. We named our children. Our dog. Our cottage.’ He lets a brief smile cross his face. ‘Just as we were about to explain our feelings for each other to the church, to her parents, my father lost everything and our status changed. A single bad business decision on his part and our handsome home in the leafy suburbs became a house share. Church handouts kept us fed and watered while our home was repossessed. Although we tried to carry on, I’d been sworn to secrecy about the whole thing. The church knew, and Susan’s father knew, but he didn’t approve of his daughter’s relationship with the son of a failure. Leaving for a new life was our only choice.’

‘Did you tell her anything?’ I ask.

‘I went to see her father, pleaded with him to let us stay in touch. I told him I loved her. That I wanted to finish college, move back to Sheffield and get a job. That I wanted to marry her. He disapproved of such sentimentality. He believed we weren’t more than children, incapable of understanding love and all of its ramifications.’

I try to imagine such strong opposition.

‘They were lost in a time warp. Locked in the 1950s.’ He drops his head. ‘I told him so. I was almost eighteen, for God’s sake. Okay, I wasn’t fully a man, but I wasn’t a boy. I was angry. Frustrated. I was impetuous.’ He gets up, stepping to the back wall of his office. He moves some papers about, files away her letter, then comes back and sits down, resting his hands before him. He looks exhausted.

‘I wonder how things might have been different had I stayed in Sheffield.’

When I arrived less than half an hour ago, James looked like a man in charge of his destiny. A man who knew life and his role within it. He was the man of this house. He was in charge. Now, James looks broken. He looks grey. Aged. His brow is scrunched and his eyes are weak.

‘So, she’s gone,’ he says.

I nod. ‘This morning.’

‘But she gave you this before she left?’

‘Yesterday. I was going to post it today. Then when I heard she’d gone and, I don’t know, I went into autopilot. I just got in my car and drove. I don’t know if I thought she might have come here, or if you might know where we should look. I’ve been stupid.’