I didn’t let myself laugh. Gilsland was roughly a mile back down the railway line – a village of a few hundred inhabitants clinging to the remnants of Hadrian’s Wall. Its only other claim to fame was a sulphurous spring, rumoured to produce long life among those who held their nose and drank its waters. The village had experienced a boom two decades back when men from the ministry arrived and declared they were going to transform countless acres of virginal peat bog into a modern RAF base. They did so, at colossal expense. Brought wealth and workers to the place. Tested the rockets that might one day have flown to the moon. Broke the sound barrier so often that the locals got used to their windows rattling. Then the government lost interest. The plug was pulled on the space race and the workers went away. The money that locals had earned in the good times was sunk into subsidising family farms and paying the rent on properties they could no longer afford. People stopped visiting the tourist sites. Dr Beeching even closed the railway station. Gilsland began to fade.

‘You’ll maybe know Dolly,’ said my new friend.

‘Dolly?’ I asked. This was the most I had spoken in months. I was torn between craving a return to the silence, and continuing to lose myself in the warm comforts of her inane prattle.

‘Little woman,’ she explained. ‘Lives in the house by the turn. She’s got normal hands but no arms. Do you know who I’m talking about? She’s a dinner lady at the school. She said you’d had a natter a few weeks back. You said you might come and give a talk at the school.’

I had no memory of the conversation. All I could recall was a short, stout woman who had said something about me coming to the school and talking to the pupils about what it was like to be from somewhere other than there.

‘Would you want to talk to the children?’ asked Felicity. ‘Your neighbour, Mr Parker – he talks to the schools. Our Fairfax is a regular too. You might have something worth hearing.’

I considered my new acquaintance properly. She had a nice face. Her teeth were white and even and she was wearing no make-up. Her hair was the brown of varnished wood. She was wearing clumpy brown shoes and her skirt reached past her knee. I would never have spoken to her had she not spoken to me first. I’d have laughed at her type at university. Would have sneered into my drink and made fun.

‘I’m not sure I’d have anything worth hearing,’ I said. ‘I don’t know the area. Not really. And I’m a bit lost, to tell you the truth.’

‘Lost? Like, you don’t know the way home?’