‘Hang on, I’m sensing something.’ Betty waggles her head. ‘I’m picturing a bacon sandwich. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Humph,’ George says, and snatches the newspaper from the side table. ‘Four slices, as crispy as your hair.’

She’s brought her own dog along today, an ugly old rescue greyhound called Lucky. Betty covers his ears as she walks him through the house to the back garden. ‘I can take your potty mouth, but my poor boy’s been through enough and he doesn’t need to hear it.’

George laughs. ‘Ha! I bet he doesn’t think he’s lucky!’ Then: ‘And what the fuck is he wearing?’

‘It’s a coat I knitted for him. Don’t listen to him, Lucky. You look hotsy-totsy.’

‘He looks like one of those piss bottles men get given in hospital.’

‘Nonsense. He looks lovely and smart, don’t you, Pipperoo? He needs it, anyway. He gets cold, don’t you, Lucky?’ Betty says, rubbing the dog’s ears as Lucky cowers in the itchy polyester.

‘He’s not cold, he’s embarrassed,’ George says, and Lucky’s tail moves to the left by a couple of inches, then back again. ‘Look, his tail’s moving. He agrees with me.’

‘I thought dogs couldn’t communicate?’ Betty asks innocently.

George raises his finger in response and Betty chortles with delight.

‘A point to me,’ she says to Poppy, holding up her hand for a high-five, which Poppy loyally ignores.

‘Would take more than a coat to smarten up your mongrel anyway. He’s got teeth like a bag of burned chips.’

‘Rude. I did knit a little one for Poppy …’ Betty says, pulling out something pink with bobbles on it.

‘No. Absolutely not. She’s not wearing a coat. She looks ridiculous enough as it is.’ George wonders, again, why Ellen chose to punish him with a dog. What was she thinking? Bloody Poppy. What does the dog want from him? He has nothing to give her. He’s never once tossed her a scrap of his toast, let alone a bone, yet there she is, every mealtime, looking at him as if he’s hung the moon, or invented Pedigree Chum. He doesn’t even feed her. Betty does that, and she takes her for walks with Lucky.

No matter how hard George tries, he can’t shake them off. Poppy and Betty seem to be here to stay. The other day Betty found the spare key when she was cleaning the kitchen (nosing about in the tins), and now she simply appears every morning.

He’s sworn at her, ignored her, pretended to be asleep. Once he even tried being dead, but she just stepped over him, said, ‘Great Scott,’ and put the kettle on, then let the dog out and sang a song about waggy bones.