I threw three potatoes in the sink and began peeling. ‘So, it was a pretty uneventful day, then?’ He twisted his shoulders in a shrug. But when I started browning the meat and vegetables, and he assumed my attention was elsewhere, he let his head drop back against the cushions. Then, when I glanced at him again, he had fallen asleep.

We ate dinner together – at least, Jack sat at the table with me, but he had a bird book open beside his plate. I was, temporarily, too tired of the battle to make any protest. He ate ravenously, though, as if he hadn’t seen food since breakfast time.

But the next morning, to my surprise, he put up less resistance to getting up and getting dressed. When the time came to leave, he shouldered his bag and silently trudged away. Maybe he was beginning to accept the inevitable, I thought. Maybe the tide had turned.

That day Colin came into the bindery. He lived with his mother, somewhere on an estate that lay to the east of Penny’s house, and he was a regular visitor. He pushed the door open, marched in and laid a heavy carrier bag on the counter. Penny was working on a big case for a photographer’s portfolio and Leo was trimming boards at the guillotine. Andy was on day release and in any case it was my turn to deal with Colin. We took it roughly in turns, without actually having drawn up a rota.

‘Morning!’ he shouted. He had an oversized head that looked too heavy for his shoulders and his voice always seemed too loud for the space he was in.

‘Hello, Colin. How are you today?’

‘All the better for getting this finished.’ He began hauling a mass of papers out of his bag. Penny and Leo were suddenly completely absorbed in their jobs.

My heart sank. Colin had been writing a book ever since he first came in to see us, and would regularly turn up with fragments of it that he wanted us to discuss. It was going to be a cookery book. He had chosen us, he announced, to be his publishers. Penny and I had often tried to explain to him the difference between binding an interesting collection of personal recipes and publishing a cookery book, but he took no notice. The sample material, in any case, usually consisted of recipes torn from women’s magazines and annotated with drawings and exclamatory scribbles in a variety of coloured inks, so we hadn’t worried too much about the day of reckoning. Now, apparently, it had finally arrived.

‘I have to have the books ready soon, of course. Mum’ll want to give one to all her friends, won’t she?’