This is the reality of it: the shop is a large space cut in half along its width by a full-length wooden counter on which there’s a handwritten sign on a piece of card: cash payment only. The dressing room is in the left-hand corner, with a faded velvet curtain for privacy and a faded red rug on the floor. There’s a long rail affixed to the wall on the other side of the counter and hanging on the rail there’s a fake fur coat. Behind the counter is Moss’s cutting table with a modern sewing machine and a quantity of brilliant coloured threads. The place is shabby rather than elegant.

Moss greets me morosely. His hair is longish, coarse, collar-length, brushed back from a face dominated by dark bushy eyebrows. He’s overweight, but on the other hand, in his black jacket and tie, he has the upright bearing of someone important, some who knows he is someone.

‘Hello, I’m Fern Banks,’ I tell him. ‘Your wife—’

‘Yes,’ he says, looking at me from under his wild eyebrows without enthusiasm. ‘She told me to expect you.’ His voice, like Dinah’s, is heavily accented and his face is stern. He has a jug of filter coffee brewing and he pours two cups for us then leans on the counter and sighs deeply. ‘What’s the weather like now?’

For some reason I feel obliged to look through the window, even though I’ve only just come in from the street. ‘It’s a bit chilly, for May.’

‘Chilly, is it? It’s quiet. So, tell me,’ he says softly, confidingly, as if it were a secret just between the two of us, ‘how’s business with you?’

I shrug. ‘Not great.’

‘Dinah tells me you buy cheap and sell cheap.’

It sounds awful put like that and I feel I have to defend myself. ‘I buy cheap and I sell competitively,’ I tell him, but it doesn’t come across any better. I look up at the lonesome fur coat while Moss gazes out of the window at the passing cars.

‘It’s easy come, easy go,’ he says. ‘People buy rubbish these days and if it doesn’t fit properly, who cares?’

‘I know. Crazy, right?’ I’m totally with him on this subject. ‘Why buy cheap and mass-produced when you can buy quality vintage?’ I literally drool over some of the details on the clothes that I sell; for instance, the little tabs that hold the bra strap in place under the dress – how lovely, how thoughtful is that?

‘Huh.’ Moss leans on the counter heavily and gives a long and heartfelt sigh.

His eyes are distant, as if he’s remembering better days.

Neither of us says anything and the silence seems to drag on. It’s so quiet that I can hear his watch ticking.

‘See what I’m telling you? How quiet it is?’