Kelly Chidgey Grimes, late to rise, a little ropy from the previous night’s turn of events, tripped over a body face-down on the floorboards between the clothing bin and the lending library. The head was sheltered by a Cluedo board. The body was clad in a black Hurley tank top, a single adidas Stan Smith runner on the left foot, and a pair of madras pants bunched around the knees. No underpants. Kelly moved the Cluedo board to see the face and to unsee the rest.

‘Cnut.’

He rolled over, to show the front side of his head. It was weeks since Cnut had been sighted. Everyone assumed he would turn up again. Cnut’s history, nutshelled.

‘Wake up.’

Kelly switched on the La Marzocco. Cnut probably had a real name, she thought, but Bluebird had no curiosity. This place named its own names.

‘When did you turn up?’ she asked.

Groggily, Cnut scratched his bald head, or bald face, whatever you called it, and held a scrunched-up piece of official-looking paper with a Bluebird Building Society logo, which he now read with as much puzzlement as a pirate who had passed out with a treasure map in his hand. Kelly’s first task: fill this guy with enough coffee to get him out.

‘Forecasters are bullshit,’ was Cnut’s wisdom for the day. And: ‘Bankers too. Never trust anyone.’

Kelly untangled the hem of her morning-after caftan from where it had got caught up in her underpants and made coffee. One footstep at a time. Her phone rang: Norma. Kelly’s headache spiked. She popped a Berocca and went out to the deck. She gazed down at the beach, wondering where Gordon had gone and whether it would be better for her to be at home when he came back, while offering periodic murmurs of assent into the phone so that Norma could sustain the suspension of disbelief that she was being listened to.

‘… who has a lovely unit at Edendale, though I believe you have to pay for absolutely everything. John Nolan was the solicitor there when they set it up, and he said—you know John Nolan, his daughter was Ellen who was at school with you until she was hospitalised with … was it nodules? No, it was the other one who had the nodules, Ellen had the …’

Boy, could that woman talk. Her streams of consciousness would divert at the least provocation onto a tributary of over-detailed, excruciating mundanity. Since forming her country club bond with Norma, Kelly had come to forgive the idiosyncrasies. At heart, Norma was well-meaning, burdened with antiquated views and half a century of marriage to Ron. But couldn’t she just say something in five words, not the available five thousand?

‘… and so Doctor Chun, who’s Korean, told her she had a spongiform growth on one of her …’