Then, without slowing, she dipped under the serving hatch and reappeared behind the counter. That’s why she’d started mopping at the doorway, because this cleaning lady was also the serving lady.

Mike looked at Jack. His face was serious, and his expression clearly said, ‘I may have been a copper for thirty years, dealing with the toughest of the tough, but there’s no way I’m going to be the first one to walk on her wet floor.’ So, Jack took Point, and ventured forwards. For some reason, Jack thought it best to take huge strides towards the frowning woman behind the counter, leaving behind as few dirty footprints as possible.

As they sat with two pots of tea and two full English breakfasts, they talked like old friends. ‘Are you gonna be at the birth?’ Mike asked, as he slurped his piping hot tea through pursed lips. ‘I was there for all of mine. It’s the most disgustingly fabulous thing you’ll ever see.’ Mike, it turned out, had six kids – ‘two of each,’ he joked. ‘Two girls, two boys and two as-yet-unidentified. They’re amazing. Have more than one, Jack. Mine fight now, ’course they do, they’re still young, but it’s good to know that, when me and the missus have gone, they’ll have each other.’

‘Maybe we’ll see how we cope with one first,’ Jack replied. And then, quite unlike him, Jack found himself talking about very personal things, to this relative stranger. ‘We left it quite late,’ he explained. ‘Maggie’s a doctor and, with me being Job, we always seemed to be working towards something, rather than arriving. Moving to London, her promotion, my promotion. The baby wasn’t planned, which, if I’m honest, was the only way it was ever going to happen.’

Jack smiled an unexpected smile as he recalled the moment Maggie had told him he was going to be a dad. They were on a flight to St Lucia, to collect his own dad from a cruise and bring him home to die. It wasn’t a morbid memory. It was a moment that told him to live life to the full, because, all things considered, it’s so very, very short.

When Mike took over the conversation again, he went into great detail about the birth of his third and Jack tried to filter out some of the more gruesome parts of the story as he was still eating. ‘He was blue ’cos the cord was round his neck. I tell you, Jack, there’s nothing more terrifying at the birth of your baby than silence. Scream! I was thinking. And he did. Then the little bugger carried on screaming for the first seven months of his life!’