It was a hob on a Primus stove and a chipped old earthenware sink. It too looked out over the marsh, slightly west, towards Holkham Bay, but the thin light threw only faint shadows. She drew a finger through the dust on the Formica table and watched him make coffee on the stove. His hands were almost delicate and belied the strong handshake he’d given her the first time she’d met him. She was reminded of the way he’d handled her mother’s miniature camera – the way his long fingers worked quickly and deftly. It struck her as odd that he kept coffee here. The domesticity of it didn’t fit. Had he brought other girls here? There were many things about him that didn’t fit. A memory of Arthur and Jack facing each other in the courtyard last month sprang into her mind.

‘What is this place? Doesn’t anyone live here?’ She had her breath back now and her control. It was obvious no one did live there, but she wanted him to explain it, to make it normal.

‘I found it not long after I got here, on one of my rides on the bike. I get a bit stir crazy round here. It’s the flatness, the lack of hills. All that sky, it drives a man nuts. And the goddamn base. All the rows and rows of Quonset huts and concrete and nothing else but barley and sugar beet fields. And the waiting. I get sick of that too. I saw the roof from the road, and I just wanted to see what it was.’ He passed her an enamel cup of dark brown liquid. ‘I shouldn’t have taken you to that room, I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted you to see this place. I think it’s kind of special.’

The coffee was bitter but hot. He was pouring something from a bottle into his. ‘Some of this?’ He held up a bottle of bourbon, its liquid a deep, glossy black.

‘All right. Just a little.’

It was hard to understand why an old shack would be special to him but she liked the way he was talking, as if he thought she understood him. It made her want to.

‘But you get to fly. Isn’t that an escape?’ The drink was hot but she swallowed it down, blinking.

He laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess, but that’s work. Here, it’s a kind of escape from people. I always liked that. I never had that at home, always a house full of family, people coming and going all times of the day. I always wanted space.’

‘But I thought you grew up on a ranch. Surely there was lots of space.’