‘No, it’s not going to work,’ Steve would reply. Or, ‘Yes, it’s possible. I’d better come and see it. I’d better come and measure the ceiling, to check headroom, and then look at the joists to see if they can take the load – because they probably won’t be structural timbers capable of supporting heavy furniture. No, you will have to employ a carpenter to reinforce everything, and while he’s doing that you’ll have to upgrade your plasterboard to twelve or sixteen mill so it’s a fire barrier, and no, again, no. You’ll have to abandon that chic spiral-staircase idea, because a chic staircase won’t allow anyone in the bedroom to escape quickly enough should there be a roasting, blazing fire. You can put in a roof window, yes, but not in the south elevation where you want to put it – you won’t get planning permission. Yes, you will need an architect to draw it all up, and you must then submit the application to me and my colleagues on the appropriate forms having paid the appropriate fee. We know the rules, and we don’t ever break them – for your safety. For everyone’s safety. We are not pedantic people, determined to frustrate your dreams – we are the ones you will turn to in gratitude, for your building will not collapse or burn. You will not drown in toxic smoke, gasping for air – because of us.’

We live by the rules, and keep children safe.

Steve was a down-to-earth man, and worked for the fire service as a volunteer. He was happy in the company of men, and there was a cheerful ease about him that Michael found curiously intimidating, like the smell of a locker-room. He had once had to pull someone off the electric rail by a level crossing, and had done so with a wooden-handled rake.

That’s what he said, though he didn’t like to talk about it. Michael couldn’t remember how it had come up, because he would never have said, ‘Steve. Tell me about some awful thing you have seen or done – tell us your worst fire-service story.’

And where had he found this rake?

Perhaps the line ran past an allotment, or a back garden where the owner was standing by his shed, gathering up the leaves?

Steve also played rugby.

He probably had communal showers. Behind Michael’s back, he probably used the foulest language, for contact sport required adrenaline, and adrenaline led to men slashing the air with violent words: ‘Oh, Christ!’ he’d cry, if Michael’s name ever came up. ‘Michael, in Accounts? That shit-for-brains cunt. Fucking Michael…’

With a pint in his hand, he would speak like that – he might well use that hand grenade of a word. Why not?

Behind Steve’s back, Michael would say, ‘Ah, Steve. He knows his stuff. He tells it as it is.’