Today, he wasn’t even in the mood to be polite. He couldn’t listen to the man’s dull recollections of his day at Farnborough Airshow or the rugby match he’d been to, or whatever subject happened to be buzzing in his bonnet when they both sat down to chat. There was only so much information Charlie could contain inside his head, and there was no space for the things that didn’t matter. He was worried for his sister. He was worried for himself. He had a sense that she was drifting, but he didn’t know to where. And he was sure that if he had to hear another bulletin from Mr Kimball on the progress of the roadworks outside Tolworth, he was going to catapult his chair across the room.

Two full days of rain had scuppered plans to finish off the root cellar, which had only made him irritable. He was supposed to be outdoors today with Joyce and Mr Mayhood, smoothing out the concrete on the roof. They’d built a timber form and nailed it to the walls already. The surround of bricks and all the rebar had been fitted, too. But when Tuesday’s mizzle took a turn for the torrential, Florence had to ring the concrete company to stop the mixer coming. They’d put the whole thing off until tomorrow, when the forecast looked much brighter.

He’d spent this morning doing chores around the farm: collecting eggs and mucking out the henhouse, scrubbing down the porch steps, heaving shovel-loads of sodden leaves into the compost bin and trampling on them. Meanwhile, Joyce had gone off to survey the trees along the driveway with the Mayhoods, marking out the ones that needed lopping back or felling. ‘Looks as if I drew the long straw for a change,’ she’d boasted, passing through the yard, but he was glad to see her smiling. And besides, a bit of hard work with a shovel did him good – the muscles he’d developed in his stretch at Huntercombe were starting to get softer. When he was done out there, his armpits had an awful reek and there were specks of chicken muck and leaves stuck to his face. He’d gone to have a quick wash in the sink and smarten himself up for his appointment, combing through a bit of hair cream, putting on a collar and a tie.

As punctual as ever, Mr Kimball pulled into the drive at ten o’clock. It was funny how the Mayhoods always treated him as though he were the Duke of Edinburgh, coming to the door to shake his hand and ask about his wife and daughter, who was still in infant school. He was shown into the dining room, where Florence had set out a pot of tea for him beside a plate of home-made biscuits. She’d even put a little cushion on the chair, in case he made the same complaint as last time: ‘Honestly, I’ve had such trouble with my back since I was in the army.’ It had seemed to Charlie like a thin excuse to drop a mention of his service, but perhaps that was unfair. Any man who’d seen the front lines was deserving of some adulation, he supposed, and had the right to publicize it.