Mandy’s Cafeteria cocked a lazy eye over the beach front at Broad-stairs, a small seaside town where, Jessie informed me, old people went to die and foreign students went to learn English. As we struggled to open the car doors, hacking winds eddied in from the North Sea. The esplanade was deserted except for one brave but stupid man being dragged along by his Dobermann pinscher, his wispy white hair gone haywire as he battled against the wind. I surveyed the pebbly beach, which was rimmed with seaweed and debris from the dawn tide. It matched the stormy English Channel, which ‘merged with impressionistic strokes into the sky’, I declared aloud. Jessie responded by telling me to stop showing off.

Far away, where the sea ended, France began.

Mandy’s sold a ‘Full English Breakfast for 99p’, and after over twelve hours without food we charged through the door like galloping horses with Hurricane Broadstairs at our backs. The young woman at the cash desk, her beak poking out of long, lanky hair, grimaced when we blasted cold wind into her cosy parlour. Clearly we were the first customers of the day: when we ordered the full monty, she all but stomped out into the kitchen.

‘It’s because we’re black,’ I muttered. ‘See, as soon as you leave the big cities this is what you find.’

She replied with a scornful glance before muttering back, ‘You can decide that or you can decide she’s a sad cow and would be that way with anybody. The choice is yours, Mr Paranoid Williams.’ I was getting used to Jessie’s understated ripostes.

We sat opposite each other with breakfast spread before us. I had orange squash. She ordered PG Tips, the smell of which floated pungently over to me whenever she spoke. I hadn’t been in a Greasy Joe’s for years because I eat fruit and muesli for breakfast – good for the brain and the bowels. I watched Jessie fold a lardy rasher of bacon on to her fork, scoop up some moist black pudding, prong a fried tomato, spear a few baked beans and crisped mushrooms, dip it all into the runny heart of an egg, then into a puddle of ketchup, stab some fried bread on to the end and stuff the lot into her mouth, leaving a tell-tale trail on her chin.

I leaned over and deftly wiped it off with my own napkin, then found myself wondering if I had just found someone to care for.