Because what was he going to do if he couldn’t? If he couldn’t turn the tide? Live his life like a hermit, growing older and grizzlier and more eccentric in his windswept little cottage on the moor?

Up until now, he hadn’t thought much about the future, not long-term, anyway. Not in the sense of years and decades instead of days and months. But listening to Anna talk about her future, full of pages yet unwritten, had made him think about his own.

When he imagined the book of his life, he couldn’t see blank pages ready for the touch of a pen. It was slammed shut. Locked. Hidden away in a dusty drawer and forgotten about. It made him feel like a coward.

So here he was. Day one. Step one. He had to do it.

His pulse kicked up a notch just thinking about it, then settled into a steady trot, but he didn’t let it deter him. He took a deep breath and reached for the car door handle.

The first half of the walk across the car park was okay. He used his imagination to paint over the top of what was there and turn it into a place that held no fear for him. The low-budget shrubs and spindly trees between the rows of vehicles became gorse and bracken. Scattered cars among the empty spaces became weather-hewn boulders. The sound of the traffic, only twenty feet away on the main road that ran past the supermarket, became the rushing of the wind between the rocky tors of the moor.

However, as he got closer to the store, it became harder and harder to keep the images in place. It was the noises that really threw him: trolley wheels rattling, car doors slamming, bored children whining from their metal carts. He wasn’t used to it anymore.

By the time he got to the entrance, not so much a door but a large rectangular hole, he needed to stop, close his eyes, and breathe. Other shoppers wandered past him; he could feel the breeze from their movement, but he tried to ignore them, concentrating instead on counting to three as he breathed. In, two, three… Out, two, three…

He opened his eyes, keeping the rhythm going in his head. He was on the edge of the cliff of his panic now. This was what he was supposed to be doing, wasn’t it? Pushing himself, bringing himself closer to the edge than was comfortable without toppling over it.

He’d been keeping his focus blurred, trained on nothing in particular, but now he lifted his head and chose something random to home in on – a display stand, full of DVDs of last summer’s blockbuster action hit. He counted the slots, the individual cases, and when his head was full of numbers instead of the whispering panic, he began to move towards it. It felt as if he was edging his way along a tightrope, strung from the edge of his cliff towards the horizon, suspended over thin air.