‘Oh, you’re all right today. Foxy Seddon is on maternity leave and the council haven’t found a replacement for her yet. I wouldn’t bother if I were you. They send round a temporary warden every now and then, but he was here on Saturday so I doubt he’ll be back.’

‘You’re probably right but I’d better pay my dues,’ said Gabe, thinking of how the villagers and possibly local press would have a field day if it got out that he was too mean to pay for a car park ticket. So Foxy Seddon was a traffic warden, thought Gabe, remembering a fierce girl who’d reminded him of a mini version of Miss Trunchbull when they were at school. Now she was having mini Trunchbulls of her own. He really had been away a long time.

Troy chuckled. ‘Well, I suppose you’ve got to set an example, being a celebrity.’ He dug in the pocket of his baggy blue overalls. ‘Here. I’ve got some change. Hang on.’

‘No. It’s fine. You don’t have to give me money.’ Gabe was dismayed to be given a handout by a pensioner.

‘Save you a trip to the paper shop.’ He held out two twenty-pence pieces and a ten pence on his grubby palm.

‘Thanks. I owe you,’ said Gabe. ‘I’ll pay you back as soon as I get some change.’

‘Oh, no need to do that. I’ll have my reward telling everyone at the Smuggler’s how I gave the millionaire Gabe Mathias a loan.’

Gabe swore silently, but managed a smile. ‘I appreciate it,’ he lied.

Troy smirked. ‘I’ll be looking forward to you buying me a pint while you’re down here. And a nice plate of that fried whitebait you cooked on the breakfast telly the other day. Not that I watch much telly, but my Evie saw you and told me.’

‘Really? How is she?’

‘Arthritis is bad, poor maid, but she still gets about and she loves TV cookery shows. She said she thought you put too much flour in that batter for those seafood pancakes you made the other week. Bet they were lumpy.’

‘Really?’ Gabe said, slipping into the polite and good-humoured tone he’d learned to adopt after years of comments on his cooking. He had always liked Evie Carman, though. She’d been kind to him, and had once stepped in when he was being bullied about his greasy hair and ‘creosote tan’ by some local lads who’d been referring to his Greek heritage. He must have been around twelve and about to tackle the pair of them himself when Evie had told the ‘moronic little sods’ to ‘bugger off’. Although Evie was fifty years older than Gabe, she’d had plenty of experience of abusive comments in her lifetime.