The flame caressed his fingers, and with a curse he flung a blazing scrap of paper into the middle of the floor. Charles stepped over and trod it out. He felt almost guilty at leaving the idiot to his own devices. No one to cook him a meal or force him to go to bed; no one even to preserve him from the ever-present threat of his pyromania. As he rolled his tiny stock of spare clothing in a sheet of newspaper, something like a lump rose in Charles’s throat at the thought that Froulish was, after all, about his nearest approach to an old friend, and that their parting must come at once, and come in a manner so brutal and silent. He looked up almost affectionately at the moody figure crouching at the centre of a blue cloud.

‘Shan’t be long,’ he said, hating himself, as he clambered down the ladder with the newspaper bundle beneath one arm. ‘I’ve just got to go round to Ern’s.’

Froulish nodded sulkily. It was, at any rate, a relief that he was so insufferable at the moment. Had he been in one of his more endearing moods Charles might have been led by an onrush of sentiment into attempting impossible explanations. It was better simply to fade out.

Lock, stock, and barrel; he hitched the cart behind his bicycle and pedalled away from the home that had become unbearably sullied, that had been revealed as a mere cess-pit on the Tharkles estate. That episode was over.

Why did he seek out Ern? Was there any hope that Ern could, in any important way, get him out of this mess? Obviously, no; but Charles’s pride was beaten down to the point at which he found it impossible to stand alone. Irrational as it was, he felt a vague flutter of hope that Ern would drive the weight of his Manchester common sense into the heart of the problem, as he had driven the weight of his chunky body into the oncoming bulk of the man with the bald head.

The streets were dark and quiet. He cycled quickly, and once the near-side wheel of the cart dragged protestingly along the kerb-stone as he rounded a corner too narrowly. As he approached the quiet, dingy street where Ern lodged, he felt like the one living thing left on earth. The cold wind seemed to have driven everyone and everything into shelter. It was beginning to freeze, and the sparsely planted lamp-posts were islands of yellow silence in the sea of darkness.