He glances up, sharply. ‘You were here back then?’

‘I’m always here.’ I nod. ‘That’s me. A part of the landscape – a blot on the landscape. In fact I was … uh … Carla and I were …’ I shrug.

‘Oh. Oh, really?’

Mr Huff looks slightly surprised. ‘So you were … Oh. So you were here – resident – when everything uh …?’ He scowls. ‘But why didn’t I already know that?’

I shrug (cow Author not doing her job, I suppose).

‘That’s never been mentioned,’ Mr Huff persists, ‘I mean there isn’t any physical evidence, any testimony … and documentary evidence in all of the … all of the …’

He starts feeling for his pockets (grief briefly forgotten) as if the information relating to my early life in Pett Level might be miraculously contained therein.

Oh, here it is – here’s the little bit of paper all about what an insignificant lump of crap you are (cheerfully holds out tiny till receipt with hardly anything printed on it).

‘It’s my size.’ I shrug. ‘I’m so huge that people kind of … they pass me over. It’s difficult to engage. They ignore me the way you’d ignore a giant bear.’

‘You’re the elephant in the room.’ Mr Huff grins, weakly.

‘Yes.’

‘But how odd,’ he repeats, shaking his head again, ‘that Kimberly never mentioned you, never photographed you. She worked as a war photographer for several years. Her photographs were amazingly … I don’t know … comprehensive, habitually copious, all-inclusive …’

As he speaks I quietly remember Kimberly and her camera. On the beach, in the garden, the house. Yes. I remember the camera always snapping. I remember – countless times, countless times – being briefly blinded by the flash.

‘I should go and take a quick peek at that bathroom window,’ I say. There are dark feelings in my heart. That’s the only way I can describe them – the feelings. Dark. I mean to be so easily … so … so routinely ignored.

Who’s behind this I wonder? Who’s at the back of this? Is it her? The Author? Has she gone back into the photographer’s portfolio, the photographer’s mind and just … just silently erased …?

Oh for heaven’s sake!

Just fix the window, Rusty! Just go and fix the window!

I walk through the cottage to the bathroom (ducking to avoid the door lintels, the light fitments). When I get there I realize that I have no tools with me. The ceiling is very low. I can’t straighten my neck. And there is a rabbit in the bath. A tiny rabbit. It has a very … a very deep, a quiet, an almost … a mystical quality about it.

Pink eyes. Pink nose.

I perch on the edge of the bath and I watch it. I look like I am communing with the rabbit (from the outside, in the uncut footage), and I am – but I am also hatching a plan. Yes. Me – I – Clifford Bickerton, Rusty Bickerton. I am hatching a plan. A secret plan. Which I won’t divulge here, because it’s a secret, obviously.