While talking, I had become doubly conscious of the ammoniac reek of urine in the trapped air. Since phone boxes now doubled as pissoirs, a long conversation had become an exercise in endurance on several levels. I couldn’t wait to get out.

‘Just like I said. Tell them I phoned to say I’m going to Scotland. You don’t know exactly where, but I said I’d write.’

‘Are you going to Scotland?’

‘I don’t know yet, Phyllis. But if anyone comes round, just tell them I have.’

‘Where are you now? Are you in Scotland?’

It was turning into one of those Bud Abbott and Lou Costello sketches, where the pair of them play around at frustrating confusions for a full hour, until even the audience wishes they would pack it in. I had never found those sketches very funny to watch. It was even less funny to be starring in one with Aunt Phyllis.

‘I’m at a friend’s house.’

‘Which friend?’

‘I’m not telling you, Phyllis, because I don’t want you to be frightened into telling anybody.’

‘Who would frighten me into that?’

The more I tried to reassure Phyllis, the worse I made it.

‘Phyllis, I have to go now. Don’t worry about me. I love you, and I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.’

A plaintive, panicky voice: ‘Will you write from Scotland?’

Firmly: ‘Goodbye for now, Phyllis.’

I went back to Murdie’s house and made a cup of tea. Then I spread myself flat out on Murdie’s sofa, and repeatedly bounced the back of my head off the firm cushions, all the while emitting a low moan of pain from deep within my chest. I had to do this for a very long time before I began to feel even a little bit better.

There wasn’t much else to do, so I spent the afternoon in the Botanic Gardens. It was a sunny day, and there was a hint of August heaviness in the air, the delinquent, late summer laziness that seeps into your bones and turns them to warm rubber.