‘You OK, Mikey?’ he asks, turning towards me.

‘I’m OK,’ I say, although I am pretty shaken. ‘But don’t forget I’m a REMF, a desk jockey. This isn’t my kind of stuff.’

Donovan gestures us back into the house but keeps the light low, so we sit in semi-darkness and from time to time he goes to the side of the window and peers out. I need him to explain, but before I can ask any of the questions spinning round my head he jumps up.

‘Charlie, where’s Charlie?’

He hurries towards the door but Melissa springs from her seat and bars his way.

‘No, Iggy. No! You can’t go out there in the dark. He’ll be all right. He’s a smart dog – he’ll find his way back.’

For a second it looks as if he is going to ignore her but she presses her hand against him and he stands as if stalled. Then she pulls him closer until he rests his head on her shoulder so that they are motionless. I should respect the privacy of the moment, but don’t, because it is the first time I have ever seen him appear so vulnerable, even fragile, and as he stands leaning into her it looks as if she is sustaining him both physically and emotionally.

‘I’ll light the fire,’ he says as he slowly pulls back from her embrace, ‘sit with Mikey a while. He’s come a long way so we have things to talk about. You go to bed. They won’t come back tonight.’

She asks him if he’s sure, and when satisfied he’s all right she kisses him on the top of his head the way a mother might do with her child, then says goodnight and heads down a shadowed corridor, her soft steps accompanied by the light tinkle of her bracelets.

‘A good woman,’ he says.

‘Above rubies,’ I tell him.

‘That’s right. Above rubies.’

He bends down to light the fire but I can see how much the physical effort renders his movements slow and hesitant.

‘Here, let me do that,’ I say, and start to lift wood from the pile at the side of the hearth.

‘Sure, Mikey. I forgot you were a Boy Scout.’

Using old newspapers and thinner sticks as tinder, I get it going, relieved to avoid a show of ineptitude and to see the straggly flames strengthen and flourish so I’m able to add larger bits of wood.

‘It’s how I aim to go,’ Donovan says, staring at the fire.

‘How you aim to go?’

‘I’m not being buried – no one’s putting me under the earth. I’m never leaving here in a box, Mikey. Melissa knows what to do – we’ve talked it through. There’s a little hollow not far from here surrounded by rocks, almost a ring, and I’ve already got a pyre started. Add to it all the time. At night under the stars. That’s how I’m going.’

At first I think it’s some expression of bravado but the quietness of his voice belies that and I stumble into some clumsy expression suggesting that that day is some way off.