He leaves Logan’s table with a cockle-shell pattern of wipes. Logan considers the pattern as it dries. The old Tom would be as hurt by money as by any present Logan would care to buy: the former translated into my father doesn’t care just as swiftly as the latter would be read as my father doesn’t know me. But Tom is on Anesthine, so can’t be hurt; money will be fine. It is Jules he needs to worry about it. But the drug precludes worry. Worry is a temporary swelling no sooner discovered than dissolved into the white noise of hush, hush, all’s well. He sits for some time, his tea going cold, staring at the list he has made for Jules and repeatedly forgetting the reason for his reading it. A story without a plot.

He can’t ask the young man again, for what could he know about wives? What, for that matter, does Logan know, even about his own, given his inability to choose between an ice-cream maker, a book featuring arty photographs of lost shoes, and a picture from the gallery. Then it strikes him: all three! No choice required. Buy them all, wrap them all up, let her have them all and decide for herself what she likes best.

Ten minutes later, an ice-cream maker and a book of haunting shoes dangle in their bags from his fist, and he is back in the tiny gallery. Unfortunately he is again paralysed by choice. Which picture?

Can’t keep away? says the woman with amusement. She is tweezering small pieces of coloured glass onto a canvas, creating – he can already discern – the throat of a kingfisher.

Ah, he says. I’m just not sure. I want a picture for my wife.

She puts down the tweezers, gets up from her stool and comes to stand beside him.

What sort of thing does she like?

He looks at her blankly.

This is terrible…

The more he tries to remember what his wife likes, the blanker he goes.

It’s okay, she says. What about animals? Does she like animals?

Achilles comes wagging to his mind. Animals, he says, yes. But does she like pictures of animals?

The woman has guided him to stand in front of a landscape where the sheep are constructed from the shavings of recycled fizzy drink bottle tops. She is talking him through its symbolism but Logan is conscious in his peripheral vision of a cyclist in a mustard-yellow coat. That’s her, he says. That’s my wife.

The gallery owner laughs. Aha. You’re Finlay!

Indeed, he says. Of course. Jules knows everyone in the village. Jules cycles past the gallery, oblivious that she is being observed and talked about.

We’re in the same book group together, the woman explains.