She is waiting for me when I walk in, perched on a shiny designer kitchen stool, a glass in her hand, and another next to a bottle, already poured. I put my bag down and look around. I don’t know which is a more weird scenario: that we are sleeping together, or that we aren’t. Common sense would tell me she has just, maybe temporarily, broken up with a boyfriend, and I am split from the wife I love, and am generally damaged goods, so there is no likelihood of us being together. Common sense doesn’t know everything, though. I arch my eyebrows, and say without any shame of inanity: ‘Made it.’

‘I see.’

She is no longer dishevelled. The old Elaine has returned, or almost. I pull up a stool, and she offers the wine. It is smooth and dry and a little spicy, and I am surprised she could have even ingested my version of white wine.

‘Things move pretty quickly round here, don’t they?’ I say.

‘How’s that?’ She is looking at me closely, and it is not unpleasant.

‘Well, it was only a couple of days ago that you called in to see about your box, and I had hardly ever spoken to you.’

‘And now?’ She says it as a caution to a presumption she thinks she’s heard.

‘And now I’m staying over, after you’ve been burgled and assaulted, and I’ve been threatened.’

‘Slumber party.’ She giggles just a little bit. It is a lovely sound I haven’t heard before. I almost ask her to do it again. Instead the wrong question comes to mind. It is one of those that I have developed a burning desire to know the answer to.

‘How did Tito die?’

‘I killed him.’

And then, with the kind of timing you’d expect from a TV cliffhanger, a rifle shot zings through the room, radiating the sound of making a neat hole in the glass of the front door. Behind Elaine, a plate on the wall collapses and falls to the floor in pieces. We are on the ground before it is. I point furiously towards the back, telling her to go-go-go, and as she slides away along the floor I reach for my bag and the rifle. I take the rifle and load it, then drag myself to the safest place I can find: under the island. I’m trying to look in five places at once. Would they have gone round the back? Why would they have fired first? On the verandah, at the door, looking through the glass at the kitchen, are two of my muscle friends. The blond buzzcut pushes the door open, and says, ‘Elaine?’ He pauses in the doorway. ‘That’s enough games now. You need to give us what we want.’

There is no reply from Elaine. Does she know them, or do they just know her name?