“I’ve got a degree. I’m not stupid.”

“I know,” he said, although, of course, this was not strictly true; he knew almost nothing about her.

“Then why is Mr Napier always watching? As if he’s waiting for me to make a mistake? Why must they all laugh?”

Their boss was a mystery to Harold. He didn’t know whether the rumours about the kneecapping were true, but he had seen the man reduce the toughest landlords to jelly. Only the previous week Napier had fired a secretary for touching his desk. He said, “I’m sure he thinks you are a very good accountant.” He simply wanted her to stop crying.

“I need this job. It’s not as if the rent pays itself. But I’m going to resign. Some mornings I don’t even want to get up. My father always said I was too sensitive.” It was more information than Harold knew what to do with.

Queenie dropped her head low, so that he could see the soft dark hairs at the nape of her neck. It reminded him of David, and he felt a rush of pity.

“Don’t resign,” he said, stooping a little and softening his voice. He was speaking from the heart. “I found it hard to begin with too. I felt out of place. But it will get better.” She said nothing, and he wondered for a moment if she had even heard him. “Would you like to come out of the stationery cupboard now?”

To his surprise, he held out his palm for her and, again to his surprise, she took it. Her hand was soft and warm against his.

Outside the cupboard, she pulled it away quickly. Then she smoothed her skirt, as if Harold were a crease and she needed to brush him out.

“Thank you,” she said, a little coldly, although her nose was a violent red.

She walked away from the stationery cupboard with her back straight and her neck tall, leaving Harold feeling that he was the one who had behaved out of turn. He supposed she had stopped thinking about resigning after that, because he looked out for her at her desk every day and she was there, working alone and without fuss. They rarely spoke. In fact he began to notice that if he entered the canteen, she seemed to pack up her sandwiches and leave.

Morning sun spilled gold over the highest peaks of Dartmoor, but in the shadows the ground was still brushed with a thin frost. Shafts of light struck the land ahead like torches, marking his journey forward. It would be another good day.

Leaving South Brent, Harold met a man in his dressing gown who was leaving food on a saucer for the hedgehogs. He crossed the road to avoid dogs and further on he overtook a young tattooed woman bawling beneath an upstairs window: “I know you’re there! I know you can hear me!” She paced up and down, kicking at garden walls, her body brittle with fury, and every time she appeared on the point of giving up, she returned to the foot of the house and yelled again: “You bastard, Arran! I know you’re there!” Harold also passed an abandoned mattress, the entrails of a sabotaged fridge, several single shoes, many plastic bags and a hubcap, until once again the pavements stopped, and what had been a road narrowed itself to a lane. It surprised him how relieved he felt to be under the sky again, and hedged between trees, and the earth banks that were thick with ferns and brambles.