Unexpectedly, the light spaced-out drizzle had redoubled then retripled and become something more disparaging. In attempting to digest Mark’s rant, I’d been slow at eating my chips, and now a deferred queasiness was rising in me, and I opted to leave the remainder of them for the gulls to pick at. Undaunted by the weather, a caterpillar of tourist-owned cars was moving down the hill towards the beach café car park. I realised we had lost Christine and Old Boy but neither were far away, Christine throwing a stick for a dog she had met on the beach, and Old Boy beatifically examining the half-sunken slimy hull of an old boat beneath the causeway. Mark turned for the car and whistled and both of them appeared swiftly beside us.

The fact that this was the last time I saw Mark in person is something that I quickly became disappointed about and is a fact that has become a little sadder and starker every year since. That Saturday afternoon I phoned him at home. He was out but I asked Old Boy to pass on my apologies: I had forgotten that I was supposed to go to my aunt and uncle’s for Sunday lunch, I explained, and wouldn’t be able to make it to the Quantocks. This was a lie, pure cowardice on my part. I loathed hunting as sport but in the end I could not picture myself in a crowd, trying to disrupt it. The prospect scared me. And I think if I was nineteen again, I’d make the same decision, but I do sometimes drift off into a little reverie about what difference it might have made if I’d acted more boldly and adventurously that weekend, and what other path it might have sent my life down. I got the impression it was a one-chance situation, from Mark’s point of view, and sure enough I wasn’t asked again to accompany him – wasn’t asked to write profanities on a golf course, to help save wild animals being put through unnecessary suffering, or even to attend a party in some woodland with people who were a bit more exciting than the people I usually met. Did I call Mark again after that and invite him out to the pub? Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I couldn’t say for sure. Let’s say I did, for argument’s sake. But, if I did, he was busy.