There was no time to object, because the young man called Wilf had already fallen in beside Harold, and was striding at his pace, chattering nervously. Harold tried to listen but every time he looked at Wilf he found further reminders of his son. The fingernails bitten to the quick. The way he slipped out words as if they weren’t really for your hearing. “I saw your picture in the paper. And then I asked for a sign. I said, ‘Lord, if I should go to Mr Fry, show me.’ And guess what He did?”

“I don’t know.” A passing van slowed. The driver pointed a mobile phone out of the window and appeared to take Harold’s photograph.

“He gave me a dove.”

“A what?” The van drove on.

“Well, maybe a pigeon. But the point is, it was a sign. The Lord is good. Ask the way, Mr Fry, and He will show you.”

There was something about the way the young man used his name that caused Harold further confusion; as if Wilf knew something about him, or had a claim to him, but Harold didn’t know it. They continued to walk along the grass verge, although sometimes it narrowed and it was difficult to keep side by side. Wilf’s steps were smaller than Harold’s so that he cantered at a sideways angle.

“I didn’t know you had a dog.”

“I don’t.”

The young man pulled a face and glanced over his shoulder. “Then whose is it?”

He was right. On the other side of the road, a dog had stopped and was studying the sky, panting, with its tongue to one side. It was a small thing, the colour of autumn leaves, with rough fur like a brush. It must have waited all night outside the toolshed.

“That dog is nothing to do with me,” said Harold.

As he started off again, with the young man gambolling to keep up, he could see out of the corner of his eye that the dog had crossed the road and was also trotting behind. Whenever Harold stopped and looked back, the dog shrank into the hedgerow with its head dropped, as if it wasn’t there, or was something else. Perhaps a statue of a dog.

“Go away,” called Harold. “Go home.”

The dog tilted its head as if Harold had just told it something interesting. It trotted up to Harold, and carefully placed a stone beside his shoe.

“Maybe it doesn’t have a home,” suggested Wilf.

“Of course it has a home.”

“Well, maybe it doesn’t like its home. Maybe it gets beaten or something. That happens. It hasn’t got a collar.” The dog picked up its stone and placed it beside Harold’s other shoe. It sat on its back legs, looking up at him patiently, not blinking and not moving its head. On the horizon grew the dark moors of the Peak District.