‘Cheers,’ he wheezed, his lungs working hard to keep him up, like two paper bags pressing against his chest, primed to pop at any second.

‘You’re a wreck,’ she said, lifting her red-framed sunglasses to look him up and down. ‘Ye city lads don’t know easy money when you have it.’

‘Easy?’ He laughed. ‘We should have asked for more off the bastard.’

Doctor Alec Sparling was a man of some wealth. Not that Ben would have guessed that when he first saw him. When he’d pushed in the door, the doctor had been stood at the lectern, alone under the hall’s mellow spotlight. The room’s emptiness made it seem larger than it was. Every surface was flat and polished – plastic impersonating wood. No litter. No smell that he could place. He imagined a hundred ghosts all turning in their seats to look at him.

‘Mr French,’ Sparling said, gesturing towards the front row. ‘Please, take a seat and we’ll begin once Ms Coogan arrives.’

Ben did as he was told. The heavy hand of uncertainty was brushed away before it could hold him back.

Sparling was possibly in his sixties, with a grey complexion more commonly identified with illness. If ever the man had seen the sun, he had watched it from the shade. The bags under his eyes carried a lifetime of restless nights. His small lips were perpetually pursed as if from a tartness on the tongue, and his eyes were a dull blue. Thin, black reading glasses perched on his nose; functional, unfashionable. The man’s salt and pepper hair was combed back and had receded slightly. There was no ring on any finger. He was perhaps a man too enamoured by knowledge to seek companionship elsewhere. His attire was predictably academic. Black slacks and grey shirt, both meticulously ironed.

Ben prided himself on his first impressions, but even he wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man. Each individual part of Sparling was colourless and forgettable. And yet, there was something remarkable there. He resembled less a man, and more the shadow of one.

He kept glancing nervously to the door as he typed at his laptop. The projector had thrown a blue rectangle onto the wall like an unconvincing sky. The colour had probably been chosen for that reason. It wasn’t natural. It never could be.