It’s not long before there’s a knock and I open the front door to find Noel at the top of the three steps, laden with stuff. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Supplies.’ He hands me a folded-up air mattress and a foot pump, and then pushes a sleeping bag at me. Then he bends down to collect something else from the ground by his feet while adjusting the rucksack on his back.

‘Are you moving in?’ I look at the array of things in bewilderment. How did he manage to carry all this at once? His arm muscles are obviously as strong as they looked through his shirt earlier.

‘No, you are.’ He shoos me out of the way while he drags a little heater and bottle of paraffin in with him and closes the door behind us.

I watch as he stomps his boots on the remainder of the doormat and looks around. The smell of his autumnal woody aftershave and the chemical hint of paraffin from the bottle he’s carrying have almost obliterated the cloying smell of damp emptiness that permeates the entire building. His eyes fall on the half open kitchen door and he shakes his head. ‘Evergreene had been meaning to fix that for years.’ He glances between that and the living room and then up the stairs before looking back at the kitchen. ‘That’ll be the cosiest room. Let’s take everything in there.’

He watches in amusement as I squeeze through the gap, pushing the air mattress through first, tossing the pump after it, then squishing myself through, getting my boobs unpleasantly squashed, and pulling the sleeping bag in behind me. When I’m finally in the kitchen and panting for breath from the exertion, his hand slots around the edge of the door and he lifts it easily, pulling it fully open. He gives the hinge a good smack with the flat of his hand and it stands upright, making me feel like a bit of a fool. Why didn’t I think of that?

He looks around by torchlight. ‘If I set up this heater and pump up the mattress, you’ll be nice and cosy in here. You can “camp out” until you’ve got the bedroom sorted.’ Before I have a chance to say anything, he shrugs the backpack off his shoulders and holds it out to me. ‘Mum sent this over for you.’

I put the bag on the unit I wiped clean earlier. It’s warm to the touch, and when I undo the zip, the most gorgeous spicy cinnamon smell wafts out.

‘Thermos of hot pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread just out of the oven, another slice of pumpkin pie, and a flask of tea,’ he says before I can question what’s inside.

‘And if you don’t like pumpkin?’

‘You’re stumped.’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘Stumped, get it? You know, tree farm, et cetera?’