“Good,” said George.

“We’d like to foot the bill,” said Ray, “unless you have any objections. I mean, you’ve already had to do it once.”

“No. You shouldn’t have to pay,” said George, glad to be able to pull rank a little. “Katie’s our daughter. We should make sure she’s sent off in style.” Sent off? It made Katie sound like a ship.

“Fair play to you,” said Ray.

It wasn’t simply that Ray was working class, or that he spoke with a rather strong northern accent. George was not a snob, and whatever his background, Ray had certainly made good, judging by the size of his car and Katie’s descriptions of their house.

The main problem, George felt, was Ray’s size. He looked like an ordinary person who had been magnified. He moved more slowly than other people, the way the larger animals in zoos did. Giraffes. Buffalo. He lowered his head to go through doorways and had what Jamie unkindly but accurately described as “strangler’s hands.”

During thirty-five years on the fringes of the manufacturing industry George had worked with manly men of all stripes. Big men, men who could open beer bottles with their teeth, men who had killed people during active military service, men who, in Ted Monk’s charming phrase, would shag anything that stood still for long enough. And though he had never felt entirely at home in their company, he had rarely felt cowed. But when Ray visited, he was reminded of being with his older brother’s friends when he was fourteen, the suspicion that there was a secret code of manhood to which he was not privy.

“Honeymoon?” asked George.

“ Barcelona,” said Ray.

“Nice,” said George, who was briefly unable to remember which country Barcelona was in. “Very nice.”

“Hope so,” said Ray. “Should be a bit cooler that time of year.”

George asked how Ray’s work was going and Ray said they’d taken over a firm in Cardiff which made horizontal machining centers.