‘Shit,’ I said. As we pulled in behind the tiny hatchback, I looked closely at the real estate agent with whom we’d be spending an idle, aspirational afternoon. She was standing on the pavement. Hearing our approach, she turned, smiling at no-one and hugging a clipboard to her chest. A mauve silk scarf was knotted around her neck. When she took a step towards our car, its tails blew into her face.

‘What?’ Pete asked from the driver’s seat. He was looking at himself in the rear-view mirror, pulling up a nostril to check his nose hairs. He had a small electric trimmer – a smooth, tapered thing like a bottom-feeding fish – for the express purpose of keeping them in check. He’d let it nibble away at him that morning, but the bright light in the car revealed the hairs he’d missed.

‘I know her,’ I said. ‘She was a student.’

Pete grasped an untrimmed hair between his thumb and forefinger and yanked. He grimaced, tears in his eyes, then inspected the end to make sure he’d ripped the root out.

Meanwhile she waited. Cilla Jones, with the same slight bow in her legs, the same bulge at the back of her skull. I felt a weird thrill, the way you might feel about seeing an ex-lover unexpectedly: that quiver down to the bowels, the rush that is equal parts excitement and dread.

Pete blinked away the tears. ‘Was she a loser?’

‘Worse.’

‘Worse?’ He sniffed hard and twisted the mirror back into place. ‘How does it get worse?’

‘She was… pathetic.’

There would be no avoiding Cilla’s company. This excursion had been arranged for us by the real estate agency, after we’d told them we were only interested in homes available for private sale. Pete had an aversion to games of chance, and this extended to auctions. The agency had agreed to send someone to show us around.

I wondered whether Cilla would be as shocked to see me as I was to see her.

I set my face into a teacher’s practised blankness and stepped out into the day’s strange weather – overcast, with white glare and intermittent blasts of dusty wind. I instinctively drew myself up to my full athlete’s height, sucking my navel towards my spine, rolling my weight from my heels to the balls of my feet.

Did she recognise me? She took a few tottering steps forward in her kitten heels to slip her small, hot hand into the hand I had extended. If she did know me she didn’t flinch.

‘Hiya,’ she said. ‘I’m Priscilla from George Jones Real Estate. I’ll be showing you folks around today.’