There is something in what Nina has said, but I can’t for the moment grasp it firmly. The Buddhism – she was right about that – and the yoga. But was I supposed to indulge her in it as she indulged herself? We both knew that it wasn’t real, this spiritual odyssey of hers. She wore it obviously and mischievously.

But the music was real. At first, I didn’t get it. Pop, maybe – she was young. We all were. But eighties music? The worst of the musical decades, proved by posterity. But later I did get it, when it was too late. She wasn’t interested in the artistry or the symmetry or the poetry of the music. She didn’t care about the lyrics either. It was the mood she loved, how the music made her feel. It reminded her of things that she’d never experienced and of places she’d never seen. It had the power to alter her emotionally.

I have a memory of leaving her a gift. But her reaction to it escapes me. Maybe I wasn’t there when she received it or opened it. But I remember the things before it. I remember Tower Records in Piccadilly. I remember picking out the record and wrapping it and then carrying it to her house in the cold weather. Did I leave it at the door? It was too big surely to go through the letter box. In any case when I bought it, it was so I could tell her that, at last, I understood. It was an LP with her favourite song in it, ‘Fils de la Terre’ by Jack T. She’d originally played it on a cassette over and over again until one day the tape ran thin and just snapped. She was devastated. Resolved never to replace it. It’s not the same if I get another one, she’d said, it could never be the same.

When I bought the record, I wanted her to know that it didn’t have to be the same. It could be better instead. Vinyl not tape. Music to listen to in one place, not on the move. A song to be played at home, in confined space so that it could liberate you.

The cold is biting my back against this wall and my instinct knows I must move and keep the blood flowing. I see the boarded café ahead of me and though it is shut, I make for it at a run. By the time I reach it, I know that I will be warmer. The ground beneath my feet is hard and shocks my bones into life. I start slowly and build the pace gradually, then before I know what is happening, I am running full tilt into the night. Running like a schoolboy, freely, urgently and without any thoughts of conserving energy. I pass the café and keep running.