His big face relaxed into a grin. ‘No, I suppose, to be fair, it is mostly the men. Yeah, the men tell the jokes … and the women decide which car they’re going to buy.’

‘Is that how it works?’

‘More often than you’d think, yes. Oh, the men come in with all the technical questions about spec and engine capacity and torque measurement and then, generally speaking, they go back home and ask their wives what car they’re allowed to buy.’

‘“Allowed”?’

‘That’s usually the way it goes, yes. Let me tell you a story about a man I once dealt with. Potential buyer … there was a car he was interested in … I had my own showroom back then, and mostly I was a one-man band. Well, I had a couple of boys helped me out part-time … and of course a “spivver” …’

‘Sorry? A what?’

‘A “spivver”. He tidied up the cars on the forecourt.’

‘“Tidied up”?’

‘Cleaned them. Kept them polished up. One thing you must never allow in the second-hand car business is a car to have a speck of dust on it. Whatever’s going on under the bonnet – and I can assure you I never sold a car that was dodgy under the bonnet, though there’s plenty of dealers who do – the bodywork must shine like it’s just been cleaned.’

‘By the “spivver”?’

‘Exactly. You’re catching on, Carole. He’s got one of the most important jobs. Nobody likes driving away from the showroom in a car that doesn’t gleam. Of course, within twenty-four hours, their new purchase will be covered with …’ He checked himself and selected a different word from the one he’d intended. ‘… covered with mud, but that’s not the point. When it left my showroom, it gleamed.’

Carole reflected on the dusty second-hand offerings she’d seen on the forecourt at Shefford’s. They seemed symptomatic of the run-down nature of the business. ‘So, presumably,’ she said, ‘you’d never try to sell a car that’d got damage to the bodywork?’

‘No, most of those go to the auctions. That’s the place for the wedding rings.’

‘Sorry? “Wedding rings”?’

‘You call a car a “wedding ring”, because you’ll never get rid of it.’

‘Ah.’ Carole was rather enjoying her induction into car dealers’ patois. She was also enjoying Adrian’s company, though she suspected she wouldn’t have it for long. He’d just moved to Fethering, she was one of the first people he’d met. And she was useful to him as a source of local knowledge. Someone as sociable as he was would soon make other friends. Only a matter of time, she reckoned, before Adrian Greenford was the life and soul of the village party, holding court in the Crown and Anchor. Carole had never had any illusions about how interesting she was as a person.