“In three miles turn left on Old Station Road…” Without my artificial helper I might have passed the sign, which was almost engulfed by a hedge. I was just able to distinguish that the first word had been added, although the appended plaque was pretty well as rusty and lichenous as the original pointer. The road it identified was barely wide enough for my car to pass another, and ran straight for no more than a couple of hundred yards at a stretch. Where attempts had been made to create passing places, unrestrained hedges had invaded the space. Once again I saw little evidence of life, though I caught sight of a bovine head beyond a gate. I thought it was watching me until I realised the movement I’d taken for eyes belonged to creatures teeming in the sockets. The head was a cow’s skull on a pole, presumably erected to deter intruders of any kind. Certainly it didn’t leave me anxious to linger.

“In half a mile arrive at your destination…” I thought I would be relieved to see the end of the devious route, but I was wondering how close public transport could bring anybody to the site. How far would Roy and Bella have to walk? Perhaps I should have offered them a lift, but however excessively wary my behaviour might be, I’d wanted to view the place before they did. Perhaps I could drive them there if that wouldn’t risk inhibiting their relationship.

“Arrive at your destination…” My helper couldn’t change his tone – its tone, to be accurate – and yet the direction felt peremptory, an assumption of obedience or of the lack of any choice. Ahead the road ended at a towering metal fence encrusted with rust and quilted with ivy, and I thought the phone had misdirected me until I noticed a gap in the hedge to the left. Though branches bound with ivy were well on their way to closing the gap, it was the entrance to a car park.

The deserted expanse was spread with ragged rugs of moss. Weeds sprouting from cracks in the concrete gestured in a wind that rattled scales of dead ivy on the outer wall of the abandoned railway station, which resembled an elongated single-storey cottage with a steep roof. Holes left by fallen slates honeycombed the roof, which poked three lanky chimneys and their blackened pots at a sky like a reminiscence of their sooty past. I parked near the station entrance, where double doors had lost their hold on the frame, sprawling face down on the concrete. As I slipped my phone into a pocket, having climbed out of the car, I appeared to rouse the navigator. “Arrived,” it said.