‘I was taking delivery of one of those mini-excavators,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably seen them, but this one was a bit special – it had one of those compactor plates, so it was extra heavy. It was coming off the loader. No, it wasn’t, it was off the loader – they’d done that before I arrived. We had a local manager, who turned out to be an idiot, but he’d got the thing unloaded, and I was gathering up the paperwork and I felt a pain, right across here.’

He ran a finger over the top part of his ribcage, and sat forward.

‘Like a stabbing. Just here.’

Michael nodded.

‘Over your heart?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Over your heart.’

‘Right over it,’ said the man.

Then he spoke quietly.

‘The next thing I knew? The next thing I knew was that I thought I’d been punched or bayonetted. I was on my back, in the mud, and this… manager chap – he hadn’t a clue what to do. “Are you all right, Terry? Terry!” And I’m on my back, gasping like a fish.’

He laughed, and Michael imagined the funeral that would have taken place, as mourners gathered round the short, fat coffin. He imagined the strain the bearers would experience as they lifted it.

‘I was lucky,’ said Terry. ‘The chap who’d delivered the digger was ex-army, and would you believe it? Guess which regiment.’

Michael didn’t need to. He wasn’t given time to, and he wondered if the man’s wife regretted the fact that he’d made such a full recovery, and if she fantasised about life without him. Still he was talking, for it turned out the man who’d delivered the digger had been in the medical corps, and if it hadn’t been for his quick action Terry would have died in the mud.

‘That’s shocking,’ said Michael.

‘I would have died on the ground,’ he said. ‘End of story.’

‘So, luckily for you—’

‘He kept me breathing, this chap. And when the ambulance came – and that took ages, needless to say. When the ambulance came, the girl who looked after me – strip of a thing… looked about twelve. She said, “That man saved your life.” So it was soon after that I said to the wife, “This has got to stop.”’

A silence fell.

Michael now imagined the mute wife, listening attentively – just the way he was listening. He so didn’t want to ask another question, but the silence seemed impossible, and the man was staring at him. He couldn’t reach for his whisky: he had to stay still.

He said, ‘I had a bit of a scare. Two years ago, now—’