“That’s all right,” Ramsay shouted. He had decided the man was deaf. “ I’ll not disturb you now. I’ve seen enough. But I want to buy it. I’ll tell the agent tomorrow.”

He turned and left the old man gaping, still peering out from the crack of the door.

Ramsay hired a van and on March 1 he moved his belongings himself. It was not that he needed to save money. He had enough, and since his wife had left there was no-one to spend it on. He had offered, in his old-fashioned, gentlemanly way, to support her, but she had laughed at him. She wanted freedom, she had said extravagantly. Not cash. So he was motivated not by meanness but by a peculiar form of pride. It seemed wrong to him to pay someone to do a task that he could perform perfectly adequately for himself. He also felt distaste at the prospect of a stranger touching his personal belongings, especially those given to him by Diana. So he had tackled the job himself, with the help of a colleague, Gordon Hunter.

Ramsay realised that his request for help from Gordon Hunter marked a change of attitude. He had never before met Hunter away from work. Even before his marriage he had found the male, beer-drinking evenings in the pub distasteful. Diana, he realised later, would have rather enjoyed them, and perhaps because of that he kept her away. He knew that at work he was thought of as distant, aloof. He married above him, they said, and now he thinks he’s better than us. When he was still living with Diana, he caught whispered suggestions in the canteen that with all her money he ought to retire. When they separated, no-one offered sympathy or understanding. Perhaps they were rather pleased. It took him down a peg or two and showed he was mortal like the rest of them. So when he asked Hunter if he was free on Saturday morning to give him a hand to move some of the bigger items of furniture into the cottage, his colleague was shocked.

“Why, aye,” he said. “ Of course I’ll help.” Ramsay sensed that things between them would never be quite the same again.

They worked all morning, carrying the heavy furniture, most of it donated carelessly from the big house in Otterbridge by Diana, into the cottage. At midday Ramsay took Hunter to the Northumberland Arms and bought him several pints of beer and his lunch. The landlady recognised him and smiled but did not ask what he was doing there, so he thought the news of his move must already have reached the village. In the afternoon Gordon Hunter left—he would want to be in Newcastle on Saturday night and it took him time to prepare—so Ramsay was left to inspect the house alone.