Harry first turned up here about four years ago. Needless to say, it had nothing to do with me. The Off Wessex Museum had advertised wherever such museums advertise – in the Finchley Zoist and Astral Traveller, I suppose – for a resident wart charmer, chiromancer, ticket collector, and general thaumaturgical dogsbody, and Harry had stolen the job, according to all accounts, from under the noses of some very strong candidates. Strange things have happened down here over the years – and I don’t just mean strange in my mother’s sense, that’s to say involving my father and other women, but strange as in really strange – as a consequence of which many seasoned observers of the really strange have made the area their home. The queer white light that never left the sky on the night horses ate one another on Bodmin Moor, for example, doubled the rentable value of every derelict moorland cottage at a stroke. The bleeding stone in St Launce’s churchyard, and the white parrot that was found on Parrett Down and could answer questions on the life and times of Queen Guinevere, had similar effects. There were a lot of experienced people in for the same job as Harry. Nonetheless, against all this stiff and, more significantly, local competition, he came through. In his own words, he interviewed like a man possessed and bloody well needed to. This was the last throw of the dice. He was in deep trouble. It was Castle Boterel or nowhere. On the occasion he told me that, he looked at me in a very knowing and personal way, as if I was supremely qualified to understand what he meant.

‘What’s wrong with Finchley?’ I asked.

His eyes didn’t leave mine for a second. I was struck by the terrible thought that he was intending to put me to sleep again. But in fact he wanted me wide awake. ‘You should know,’ he said. ‘I left for the same reason you did.’

I honestly couldn’t guess what he was hinting at. ‘And what was that?’ I wondered.

His eyes relaxed their hold on me and roamed over Camilla. She and I had been sitting in a corner of The Jolly Wreckers, arguing, when Harry had wandered in and recognized me. Camilla he didn’t recognise. ‘Women trouble,’ he said.