His long hands are thin and knuckly and crisscrossed with blue veins, with one big, showy gold ring with a large purple stone. It swivels a bit loosely on his finger. I look at him, he moves his jaw a little, and the noise comes once more: clack-clack.

He clears his throat again and says, ‘Och, well: this is nice. I’m so glad you’re not garrulous. I just can’t abide garrulous people. Far better to keep your mouth shut, and have people think you’re stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt is what I always say! Don’t you agree, Malcolm? Good Scots name that, by the way!’

I don’t get this, but I smile and nod, anyway, and he smiles back: a white grin showing teeth that must be a least sixty years younger than him. When the clacking noise happens again, I realise that his teeth are false ones, and liable to dislodge from time to time, making the noise. His voice is full of phlegm, his accent singsongy and definitely Scottish. It’s like listening to someone gargling with pebbles.

He turns to Susan as Andi comes back into the room, wheeling a trolley clinking with teacups and a plate of butter cake.

‘Tell me, Susan,’ he says. ‘Can you enlighten me a wee bit further about who you are? Why are you here?’

He smiles awkwardly. It really is like the grouchy man of a minute ago has been replaced by someone doing his best to act charmingly. I think of the words in the Dreaminator package: ‘You may know me from my appearances on stage, radio and television …’ This is definitely someone who is used to putting on an act.

While Susan gives him the spiel about Community Outreach Marden Middle School, I look round the extraordinary room with the colourful decorations hanging limply in the warm air. There is a sharp smell of ointment of some sort, disinfectant, wood polish, and … old tobacco? But now there’s another smell: a sour, cabbagey odour that gradually wraps round us. It gets worse over the course of about ten seconds.

Susan pauses in her little speech to cough as the stink reaches her.

‘Dearie me,’ says Mr McKinley at last. ‘I’m afraid that rather, ah … arresting aroma is emanating from Dennis. Dennis, you’re a disgusting old beast …’

Dennis? Surely not …?

Surely yes. At the mention of his name, a huge old black-and-ginger dog heaves itself to its feet from its position under a heavily draped table and limps forward, one of its front paws wrapped in a purple bandage. It stops and raises its greying muzzle towards me.