She offers him a choice of two: the best, with an en suite bathroom and a view of the links, is five pounds fifty including breakfast. Cheered by the thought of clean sheets and a hot bath, he eagerly fills out the form in his spidery handwriting and passes it back to her.

‘We usually ask for payment in advance,’ she says, with a sharp glance. ‘Not that we think you’d do a runner, sir, you’re not the type,’ she adds hurriedly. ‘It’s just company policy.’

He nods, feeling in his jacket pocket for his wallet, wondering mildly who the ‘company’ consists of. Her mother and father, probably, who live out the back.

‘That’ll be five pounds fifty then. Cash is best, if you have it.’

He pats his trouser pockets, first the two at the back, then the two at the front. He cannot remember picking up his wallet this morning. In fact, he cannot even remember what he’d done with it on returning from the newsagents. The dead hand of dread grips his stomach. The wallet is probably still in the pocket of his old parka. He can almost picture it hanging over the back of the armchair where he left it.

He pulls out a handful of change from his trouser pocket: some coppers, two sixpenny pieces he’d never got round to cashing in when everything went decimal – a single twenty pence coin and a crumpled one pound note. One pound thirty-eight pence. Not enough even for the room without breakfast.

‘Would you take a cheque?’ he stutters, flushing under the young woman’s increasingly sceptical gaze. ‘I might have a cheque book in the car. Or I could go to the bank in the morning and get cash?’

‘If you go and look for your cheque book, sir,’ she says coolly, ‘I’ll go and ask the manager.’

He knows that it is a fool’s errand, but he dutifully returns to the car and rifles through old newspapers, empty carrier bags, sweet wrappers, dirty mugs and other detritus on the seats and shelves, in the glove pockets and footwells, even in the boot. He finds a half crown which stopped being legal currency nearly three years ago, a book of Green Shield stamps and some out-of-date Co-op vouchers, but no cheque book. He sits in the driver’s seat, rests his elbows on the steering wheel and puts his head in his hands.

He is a mess. One of life’s losers, always have been, he thinks, dolefully. Other people said he was a genius because he could work with numbers, and abstract concepts came easily. But what’s the use of a man who can’t even plan the basics of a simple trip, like remembering to bring his wallet and a cheque book?

The consequences of his stupidity are starting to dawn. He has nowhere to stay, and might not even have enough petrol to get back to London. He’d filled up not so long ago, he feels sure, but his memory is not what it was, and the petrol gauge has been stuck on empty for many years, so it is impossible to tell. He has not eaten since breakfast, and is now hungry and thirsty.