A couple of the mechanics who’d just arrived for work ha ha’d along with what they no doubt hoped was the required amount of political incorrectness, even though they’d heard about a dozen variations on the theme already that week. Leonard had been there a couple of months by then and he usually acknowledged Dennis’s supposed jokes with a benign smile and a gentle nod, like he’d just been complimented on his roses. But that day, as he nudged a metal bucket ahead of him with his foot, a mop resting over his shoulder and a two-liter bottle of floor cleaner in one hand, I had a perfect line of vision to see his free hand drop to his side, curl up and flip Dennis an elegant, perfectly camouflaged middle finger. As he trundled past, he tilted his head very slightly in my direction and gave me a slow, wrinkly wink.

I’d been working at that car yard for six torturous years before Leonard came along, and it’s no exaggeration to say I’d been giving Dennis and his sexist, racist, misogynistic jokes the mental middle finger every single day. So when I saw Leonard do it for real, even though it was totally for my benefit and there was no chance of Dennis ever actually gaining its full, glorious effect, it felt like someone had turned a light on in my heart.

After that day I started to look forward to the early mornings at work instead of spending most of the fifteen-minute bus ride praying for an absentminded cow to amble out onto the road and cause a pileup just so I could run a few minutes late. Which never happened, by the way, just adding more proof, if I needed it, that my suspicions about God were true.

By the time I arrived at the car yard, the office floors would already be gleaming and Leonard would be brewing up a pot of fragrant hibiscus tea in the lunchroom. At first, I’d been doubtful, having never really strayed from PG Tips, except for a brief accidental dalliance with Tetley a few years ago, but once you start on Egyptian hibiscus tea it’s impossible to go back. It’s a taste so delectable it has the power to lift you up and transport you from a shitty used-car lot in the southwest of England to somewhere altogether more exotic.

Every morning we’d sit at the lunch table talking and drinking the crack cocaine of tea out of the silver pot Leonard had bought off a local trader under the shadow of Mount Sinai because the accompanying waft of hibiscus had reminded him of his wife’s shampoo. He’d carried that pot around in his army kit for months, craving the warm, familiar comfort of its floral notes so often that it became permanently stained.

Over the perfumed steam, Leonard told me stories about his years in the army, and how it felt to kiss your wife goodbye over and over again to go off to places like Egypt and Korea and Borneo that you might never come back from, when all you really wanted were a few more days breathing in the smell of flowers in her hair.