I tied myself up in knots over it. And it was almost as if the tying of knots and the urge to untangle them was a secret way of … a secret way to … to avoid making my confession. The way I’d previously planned to, that night of the landslip.

Sometimes I told myself that my urge to confess (to unburden or to excoriate?) was the very thing that had ‘saved’ me. That the original impulse had only really been about the actual journey. Not the journey towards (redemption? Humiliation?), but the physical journey away (from, well, danger). Yet still it gnawed at me. And in quiet moments – which were few and far between over those next few days (those last few days) – or when I dreamed in my bed at night, I would find myself frenziedly rehearsing (composing and summarizing, reciting and readjusting). Perfecting my confession.

But no matter how hard I tried (or didn’t try), the chance to deliver it never came.

On one early occasion, I was marching up Toot Rock (fists clenched, chest out, resolve duly hardened) and happened upon Sorcha collecting wild herbs (through Andy Melbourne’s fence). She promptly invited me to her van for a farewell ‘brew’ (sage tea, she insisted, to give us ‘strength for the journey’). She was packing up to leave Toot Rock (her destination? A studio in Leeds for a spot of ‘over-dubbing’). So I naturally obliged her. But then somewhere along the line, during this most laborious and time-consuming of transactions (I didn’t realize we’d have to find the sage, then pick it, then collect some water, then set the fire), we were crouched on low stools, watching her big, cast-iron kettle bubbling cheerfully on the flames, when a ball was kicked and a child ran past and suddenly the kettle was upended and some gorse started to burn, and … and then, in the midst of all this rumpus (I was stamping out the flames and beating them with my jumper) we realized that the baby had been scalded. He’d been sleeping in his cot. His little dress and blanket were all soaking wet. So we scooped him up and took him to the closest cottage (Mr Presley’s), where he ran a cold bath and we dumped the baby in it and he fetched ice from the freezer – and the gorse was still smouldering – and after approximately half an hour, the poor soul chattering with the cold, with confusion, with sheer distress (Sorcha kneeling and praying), we decided that we should take him to the Conquest Hospital, just in case … Which we did.

Mrs Goulder kindly drove us. But the poor baby was perfectly fine, thank God, and the doctor gave Sorcha a tube of special ointment (from under the counter, bless him) and then, as I was leaving the hospital, I saw Clifford. In the car park. In his van. With his mother. And it turned out that his father had suffered a serious heart attack (during milking, the day after the landslip), and his condition was critical. And Clifford was blaming himself, and his mother was blaming Clifford, and then Alice turned up, and it was all so dreadfully tense and awkward (I’m not entirely sure why), and I promised to come back and visit him the following day. We had always been very fond of each other. Me. Clifford’s dad.