Tom takes the wheel for the last five miles. The road is now a tunnel through lashing beeches and high banks, the edges lapped by rockfalls of lumpy chalk. Tom takes no notice of the obstacles, pushing on over them, bumping us in our seats. Can he handle this road? Of course he can. Yvette drove lorries during the war with practically no training at all. I look at his hands, so much bigger and stronger than his mother’s, but his fingers are alive on the wheel like hers used to be.

Abruptly the beeches clear, the road levels, and we begin to travel between dank hedges. We’re crossing the boundary of Upton. The church heaves into view—a square flint tower above a dripping monster of a yew. “A hundred yards down on the right,” I say, as the hedge spins past in the wet. “Slow down. Here, Tom. Here.”

Tom swings in between two crumbling stone gateposts and brings the vehicle to a lurching halt. In the back of the van, something crashes to the floor.

“Ah, zut,” he says. “The Venetian chandelier.”

“Haha.”

We get out into the kind of solid, drenching, vertical rain reserved especially for people moving house. Tom opens up the back of the lorry while I wrestle with the front door key. On the floor of the hall is a letter addressed to me. I recognize that elegant hand. Tearing it open I learn that Archdeacon Frobisher wishes to visit at my earliest convenience. Those two things, convenience and Ronald Frobisher, don’t go together at all well.

We enter the vast bare cube of the kitchen. It contains a stone sink, a cold black solid-fuel Rayburn stove mantled in dust, a fridge from the atom bomb era. The fridge is plugged into the only electric socket.

“Whoa,” Tom says. “I thought my place was grotty!”

“It’ll do.”

“For what?” He folds his arms against the encroaching chill. “I wouldn’t put Borstal kids in here.”