Who is he to talk to me about the richness of life? she would say. I ask you. The richness of life is living in the present with what you have.

He would put his foot on the arm of the sofa and draw up the leg of his trousers to show them the scar. It’s still there, he would say. After all these years.

And why is it still there? she would ask. It is there because you want it to be there.

What I want doesn’t come into it, he would say. It is there because it will not go away.

And why will it not go away? Who knows? he would say. Who knows? Who knows? she would mock. I’ll tell you who knows. I know.

He could not believe that the charred bodies he was shown had once been living people. He could not recognise the other corpse they had dragged from the burning house. On his way out he saw Mabel, but she pretended not to see him and he for his part had nothing to say to her.

A long night, he thought. It was as he sat under a tree in the Old Barnes Cemetery, as he discovered it was called, that the idea of moving to Paris first came to him. At first he simply toyed with it as one of those fantasies it’s fun to have but which are so far beyond the bounds of possibility that they can safely be indulged. The cost of travel to such worlds is minimal, as is the effort required. There are no plans to make, no suitcases to pack, no precious possessions to dispose of. You sit under a tree, on an overgrown tombstone perhaps, and you are there, or there, or there.

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