Her mother was making a pie for her father’s tea. It involved an almost forgotten substance, suet, a sort of tallow, without which no pie is sufficiently life-threatening, and some cheap cuts of meat. As Melissa was leaving she looked up from rolling the pastry. Her last words were heart-breaking: ‘You’re your dad’s golden girl, you know. He’s so proud of you.’

She smiled benignly, her face floured, the pastry clinging to her fingers.

Oh Jesus. She’s got no prospect of leaving home and she’s going to have to tell them the truth very soon.

Mr MacCleod is wearing a very small straw hat, and his side-hair is gushing strongly from under the hat in ringlets. His head looks like a frozen waterfall and he seems to be a little drunk. He’s wearing a very old pinstriped suit with a brown satin shirt underneath it, and sandals. The threads on his cheeks are more pronounced than when she saw him four or five months ago.

‘You’re a lovely girl,’ he says. ‘I like a bit of meat on a girl. What Joyce called an armful.’

‘Oh thanks.’

The boathouse is chaotic. His assistant is on sick leave, he says. He indicates a broken-down sofa for her to sit. It’s prickly with what may be horsehair. He drags a wooden chair from a scullery where the lifeboat men probably made their cocoa. As it passes over the granite floor, it scrapes like fingernails across a blackboard. The floor itself has deep incisions, probably the legacy of being used for launching boats. Outside the tide is full and lapping the old slipway greedily. Here boxes of papers, set designs, beer glasses and wedges of scripts, held together with treasury ties, lie around randomly.

‘Righty-ho. How about a drink?’

‘I’m driving.’

‘Tea is over there. Or coffee.’ He points towards the galley, stacked with paint cans. ‘I don’t have any Lavazza Crema e Aroma. But there’s instant. I can’t drink the stuff. I was spoilt by living in Rome for a few years, of course.’

He pours himself a glass of beer.

‘Scuppered. Scuppered Ale. From Scilly. I’m trying it out.’

He makes it sound like a public service, as if the world is waiting for his judgement.

‘Right,’ Melissa says, taking out her notebook, ‘do you mind if I record this interview as well?’

‘No, no. Go ahead.’

She sets up the small digital camera and recorder.

‘OK, the first question is about your spring programme.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s Thomas the Tank Engine, I know, followed by The Wind in the Willows at Easter, I believe.’

‘Yes, it’s Thomas the fucking Tank Engine time again. For the kiddies. For the little, obese, pig-faced kiddies of Cornwall.’

‘What about adult theatre?’ she says, changing tack.

‘Find me an adult in the whole fucking county.’

‘You sound a little down?’