A few families with toddlers howling to be carried were toiling up the hill towards the station. Sand from the beach glinted where they trod, and I did my best to recall seaside days with Roy and Julia – a crab attempting a clumsy escape from Roy’s plastic bucket until he took pity on it and returned it to the sea, ice creams piled so high and solid that they toppled from their cones at the initial lick, a turreted fort built of sand by all of us, which borrowed grandeur from the evening shadows as we made for home – but the footprints put me in mind of the tracks I’d found in the abandoned hotel. I felt as if Bella could be following me unnoticed if not less naturally than that as I headed for the promenade. Whenever anyone I met looked past me, I had to glance uselessly back.

A lane to the seafront led between chain restaurants, as crowded outside as within. At my approach a crouching shape leapt up from behind an outside table, baring discoloured teeth – a dog roused by the offer of the remains of a burger. Opposite the restaurant was a multiplex, the Light. “Go towards the light,” Roy used to intone as a joke. Through the window I caught sight of a title on the list behind the counter, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Whichever version it was, the film might provide distraction and ideas for next term as well.

Half a dozen old folk were scattered about the small auditorium, which was spasmodically illuminated by a trailer for a remake of Snow White where it was the prince who needed wakening or, as the trailer put it, to be woke. As I sat on the back row I silenced my phone. The screen counselled the audience to hush, and then the overture began. More than one person turned to peer if not to frown at me for laughing, which was simply owning up to my mistake. The film was an opera by Britten.

The overture resembled a magical lullaby, an invitation to dream, and it wasn’t long before I started nodding in a species of agreement. Between inadvertent naps I glimpsed the fairy horde and the enchanted couples in the forest and the comic rustics at rehearsal. Bottom entered wearing a donkey’s head, to a cry of “thou art changed,” at which point my awareness lapsed again, to be recaptured by a chorus of “bless thee, thou art translated.” Not just the voices brought me back. I’d sensed a breath like a waft of fog on my cheek.