It started as a bit of fun. To put her in her place. Plus, he had a thing about teachers. He’d never forgotten the idiot who’d moved him to the class for retards. “I can read,” he’d said.

And this teacher, he’d said, “Then show us, Mundic. Show the class you can read.”

So he’d picked up the book, doing one word at a time, but the teacher was right, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get the words to stop jigging. The class laid into him after school. Retard, they called him, and they’d kept it up from that day on, ragging him and shouting “Reee-taaaaard.”

So, yes, he didn’t care for teachers.

After the interview, he’d waited for her outside Lyons. He’d wanted to spook her because it wasn’t right, the way she’d laughed when he’d said there’d be snakes. What did she know? She was a woman. She needed him to lead her expedition. Five years he’d been back from Burma, and he still couldn’t hold down a job. Either he’d get sick, or something would upset him, and he’d land in a fight. There were people queuing for food and people going on buses and people waiting to cross the road, and he couldn’t remember, he couldn’t remember anymore how to be ordinary like them because he had seen things in Burma none of those people had seen. Sometimes he couldn’t even remember who he was. He kept his passport in his pocket just to remind himself. And there were times he’d be okay, but then he’d open a newspaper and find another story about a POW who’d hanged himself and that was it, he was back in Burma all over again. There were days he even had the same thought. All he wanted was to get away.

So he followed her as she left the Corner House—it wasn’t difficult, with the fog and everything, and he liked hiding in doorways when she turned, having a laugh at her expense. After that he got curious. He wondered where a woman like her lived. He guessed a shabby terrace house. The last thing he expected was a fancy mansion block.

He went back the next day, even though it was so cold he’d had to stuff his hands into his pockets to keep warm. But it was a thing to do because there’d been days recently he couldn’t even summon the energy to play a game of cards, or he’d start, and it was like a switch inside him had got stuck, and he wouldn’t know how to stop. He was about to leave when she appeared at a window. He felt a bolt of adrenaline, like he hadn’t known since the day the army had marched past and he’d signed up on the spot. So he counted the windows and he did it out loud because sometimes his thoughts got scrambled, and now he knew she lived on the fourth floor.

After that, it became his job, following her. He left the hostel every day like he was going to work. He got a notebook and he called it the Book of Miss Benson. He wrote facts he knew, such as her address, and he kept the book safe in his pocket, alongside his passport and her map.

He went through her rubbish and found out she liked tinned soup and biscuits. He found out she lived alone. He followed her to a travel agency, and as soon as she left, he went and spoke to the chap, and he said, “I fancy a cruise to the other side of the world,” and the chap laughed and said what a coincidence, he’d just sold two last-minute tickets for the RMS Orion. Mundic said, “When’s she going? When’s she coming back?” That was his first mistake: he shouldn’t have said that—it gave him away—and he started rubbing his hands because he was scared. But the travel agent didn’t notice. He said, “Leaving Tilbury on October the nineteenth and returning home on the eighteenth.” So Mundic wrote those details in his Book of Miss Benson. And the chap said, “Take a leaflet, why don’t you, sir? If you’re interested?” Mundic put that into his notebook as well.

The more he found out, the more powerful he felt. Sometimes he said to himself, “In five minutes Miss Benson will walk onto the street.” And when she did, it was like he was so big nothing could hurt him ever again. Besides, she wasn’t the kind to give in. It wasn’t as easy to spook her as he’d thought, and he liked that. It kept him on his toes. When her collecting equipment arrived, he stopped the delivery chaps outside and said he would look after it. He broke a few things while they weren’t looking. Little ones. Just so she’d know he was watching.

Three weeks of following her, and it was more than teaching her a lesson; it was like being a man again. And now she was going to leave. She was going to New Caledonia.

He didn’t know what he would do without her.