Unless, of course, he needed help. Arriving out here, marooned among crates of equipment, Prof had put out an SOS to every muso and sparks he knew within a fifty-mile radius — only to find that most of them had moved on, some to the next life.

In the end, it was only Simon, the vicar, and Lol Robinson, formerly songwriter and second guitar with the long-defunct band Hazey Jane, now on holiday from his college course in psychotherapy. Not that Lol was any good with wiring, but that wasn’t important; it was mainly about making the tea and listening to Prof grouch and taking the blame for malfunctions. This afternoon they’d installed the final wall-panels, and tested the new acoustics by recording — in the absence of anything more challenging — some of Lol’s more recent numbers.

This had continued into the night when, at some point, Prof had stopped cursing and wrenching out leads and replacing mikes… and sat back for a while behind the exposed skeleton of his mixing board, just listening to the music.

And then had stood up and stomped across the studio floor, positioning himself menacingly in the doorway of the booth where Lol sat with the old Washburn on his knees.

‘Laurence! You little bastard, stop right there.’

Lol looking up timidly.

‘Listen to me.’ Prof glowered. ‘How long, for fuck’s sake, have you been sitting on this stuff?’

It was past eleven now, but the night was still awash with pale light, forming long lakes in the northern sky. To the south, a plane tracked across the starscape like a slow pulse on a monitor.

In the middle distance was a round tower, like some story-book castle, except that the tip of its conical hat was oddly skewed. There was a window-glow visible in the tower, unsteady like lantern light. Lol was stilled by the unreality of the moment, half feeling that if he were to climb over the farm gate and walk towards that tower, the entire edifice would begin to dissolve magically into the grey-black woodland behind.