Madi picked up her menu and studied it. ‘I thought you said pie!’ she said. ‘I’d imagined a choice of maybe two or three pub staples, but I didn’t expect this. There’s more choice here than you’d see at a lot of top London restaurants. Crab, mussels, venison, black turkey – I’m intrigued to know what that is – and roast lamb …’

‘All good local fare, Madi. You can’t live off the land and be this close to the sea without benefiting from the freshest, best-tasting local food going. Please don’t tell me you’ve been eating all that frozen and tinned stuff Patty sells in the shop. What a travesty! I must introduce you to a fantastic butcher I know. Brings his meat over in a van. To Shelling and all the other villages around, twice a week, so you don’t even have to go to him. And his turkeys are something else … well, they’re pretty much our national dish around here! I know you probably can’t eat a whole one, but I’m always willing to come over and share. In the interests of not wasting good food, obviously. As for the lamb … well, you must have noticed all the fields of fluffy little white sheep around these parts.’

‘Oh, don’t. I don’t like to think about that. Give them a face or a name, and I have an almost immediate urge to turn vegetarian.’

‘Well, don’t do it tonight!’

‘I won’t, I promise. Now, what do you recommend?’

‘The pie. Like I told you when I invited you to join me, it’s the best.’

‘Really? With all this choice, you’re going for pie?’

‘Always been my favourite, a good steak and kidney. And since my Barbara isn’t able to make it for me any more, the Brown Cow version is the next best thing. I’ll probably have the spotted dick after as well. With custard.’

‘You’re thinking about pudding already?’

‘I like to plan ahead, Madi. Know what it is I’m leaving enough room for.’

‘In that case …’ Madi turned the menu over and studied the desserts list. ‘I’m going to leave room for a chocolate fudge sundae.’

‘Atta girl!’

The evening flew by. Tom had been wrong about the singer, who never did materialise, but that just made it easier to talk, which they did, in abundance.

They were struggling with the final mouthfuls of dessert, Tom loosening his belt by a notch and Madi glad she’d picked trousers with a hidden elasticated section of waistband at the sides, so useful with her weight fluctuating up and down as it had in recent months, when Tom reached out a hand to stop someone passing by on his way to the gents.

‘Hello, Ken,’ he said. ‘Long time no see.’

The man stopped and grinned. ‘What? All of three days, you mean? Didn’t spot you tucked away over here or I’d have been over to say hello sooner. Never have liked drinking alone.’

‘Alone? Ken, you know just about everyone in here. Don’t you pretend you’ve been sitting on your own sobbing into a pint! Madi, let me introduce you to Ken Barton, an old buddy of mine, who, despite what he might have you believe, has a million friends and likes to make up a good story.’