He picks up the dress, wringing it out as he walks back around to the towpath and his boat. It finally sank in the night and is now resting on the canal’s muddy bottom with just the remains of the roof showing. His few possessions are still trapped inside. He’s been in a daze all morning, retrieving clothes and logs and kettles and plastic mugs from the water with the help of kind villagers and narrowboat owners. He even found his passport, sealed in a plastic folder. The generosity of others has been overwhelming. Even Kate was sympathetic, but it was unfair of him to call her. The last thing he wants is for people to feel sorry for him.

His plan is to finish clearing up and then move out of the village as soon as he can. He doesn’t feel safe hanging around. The fire was clearly deliberate – DI Hart suggested as much last night. Besides, there’s not much left for him here. No boat, latest book destroyed. And no partner. It’s safe to say his life has now officially hit rock bottom, just like his narrowboat. And, in all honesty, he feels strangely liberated by the unambiguity of his circumstances. If he can’t make a fresh start in life now, he never will.

He bundles the dress into a plastic bag, turns to take one last look at the sunken boat and sets off down the towpath, away from the village, passport safely in his pocket. It’s a longer route, but he’ll avoid having to walk past the line of moored narrowboats and the obligation to make more polite conversation. Christ, he could do with a pint right now. By the time of Kate’s accident, he was drinking heavily, but he’s cut down a lot since then and is determined not to lapse again. Even if he could afford it.

All part of trying to sort his life out, triggered by a small, misguided belief that if he can regain some of the mojo he had when he first met Kate, he might be able to win her back. There was a time when he was going places: published author, sharing his bohemian life on a watertight narrowboat with a beautiful portrait painter. Where did it all go wrong? On which rocks did their idealism run aground?

He keeps walking, towards the fields and railway line beyond, his brain struggling to process all that’s happened. What worries him is that if the fire was a result of his visit to the pub, Kate’s drink must have been spiked that night by dangerous people. Might they target her again? If, as Hart hinted last night, it’s connected to the modern-slavery trial, there could be organised crime gang members still at large who want revenge for the hefty sentences imposed on their colleagues – people who were put away on the strength of Kate’s identifications.