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would be immaculate, along the lines of the Laings’, full of chic, expensive furnishings, walls of inherited art, a piano in the library perhaps. They’d be going out that evening to some grand dinner party or charity do, or perhaps to the ballet or opera. They’d be Friends, of course. And yet, it seemed to me already that all of that might in fact be immaterial to him, that he held within him nobler concerns.

‘Well, another time,’ he said, smiling.

‘Definitely.’

We stood looking at each other in the dark, only a couple of feet apart and close enough for me to see that the skin around his eyes was fragile and bruised, as if rubbing with fingertips had worn it thin. Neither of us turned to leave and I had exactly the same feeling I’d had at our first meeting, reluctance in the form of a physical tugging – not heartstrings, not yet, but bits of my gut, maybe; something bodily and fundamental.

‘You look different,’ he said at last, his tone thoughtful.

I realised he meant different from the night of the party. ‘What, as in worse? Run ragged?’ I laughed. ‘I would agree with that.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant at all. I like both ways.’

‘Thank you.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

Now he left me, casting a quick glance up at the Laings’ house as he went. Though in reality the two families were probably friends, I liked to imagine that Arthur was praying he would not catch one of them coming or going, just as I did whenever I walked past.
     
    It was his wife, Sylvie Woodhall, who came to collect the plate the following Saturday. As I squatted a short distance from the cash desk, unpacking a delivery of ready-to-paint jewellery boxes, I could hear her announcing her name and describing the piece to Aislene. ‘I did send my husband in last weekend, but he’s obviously not to be trusted with such a task.’ And then she cried out, ‘That’s it there, on the bottom shelf, that big yellow one! I don’t see how he could possibly have missed it.’

‘Must need his eyes testing,’ a female voice replied, followed by a single sharp bark of laughter that set Sylvie off, and without being told I knew this wisecracker must be the scalp-hunting journalist Nina.

I adjusted my position behind the raised lid of my cardboard box so I could study the two of them more discreetly. Both women were in their late forties or early fifties and very well dressed: expensive-looking woollen coats and wedge-heeled suede boots, cashmere scarves in understated shades twined casually about the neck and shoulders, handbags about a hundred times more costly than any in my possession. Arthur’s wife had a shower of natural-looking blond curls, angular features and a pink English complexion, Nina dark bobbed hair and the kind of polished-pearl skin that spoke of high-end facials. As they queued together at the till, the huge plate now held in Sylvie’s arms like the Wimbledon trophy, they chatted openly about personal matters, quite heedless of who might be in earshot. Admittedly, this was not unusual behaviour for customers and I’d long ago learned to zone out of the myriad soap operas going on around me; this time, though, I found myself listening closely. Finishing with the jewellery boxes, I started on a package of piggy-banks that were supposed to have waited till later, dallying over the job and hoping Charlotte would not come on to the shop floor from the office upstairs to notice my breach of protocol.

‘Anyway, if you ask me, you’re doing brilliantly,’ the Nina woman said in the strong, carrying tone of a public announcement. She exuded a sense of command you rarely encountered in real life, as if she could quite unselfconsciously bring the room to silence and start an impromptu rally for the cause of her choice. ‘It’s almost two years now, isn’t it? That’s pretty good for him.’

‘As far as I know, yes. Pathetic, really, to be congratulating him on it.’

‘I think you should