Mainly to the helpless, the dispossessed and animals (including insects and birds).

Then to Charles.

All the left-overs. The scraps. The hard rind. The soggy remnants.

The mess was one thing, Avigail thought, but the gulls – the gulls – which nested on every, single chimney pot on Trevor Street and shat everywhere. Everywhere. And the young – the fledglings – just crashing about and mewing incessantly and getting squashed on the road.

Charles had also tried to give this same boxed popcorn maker to the previous person she brought to view the place – tried – and yet still didn’t quite manage to part with it. The previous viewer was called Malc and loved popcorn.

This is the problem.

This is one of the problems with selling the property.

This is one of the problems with Charles.

Avigail has tried (politely, yet strenuously – if these two adverbs can ever really be believably applied in conjunction) to encourage Charles to go out during viewings – to vacate the property, to leave everything in her perfectly capable hands – because he is tall and awkward and sarcastic and ungainly and he makes the house seem even smaller than it actually is. But he won’t. She thinks he’s fearful about leaving his stuff unguarded. He is a hoarder.

He is very protective of his stuff, while pretending – to himself, at least, but he’s not fooling anyone – that he can’t wait to get rid of it – the burden of it – and to move on with his life. Hence the whole silly performance with the popcorn maker.

Oh yes.

Avigail is perfectly wise to Charles’s little games.

She can see that it’s all just a pathetic charade.

Charles wears ironic T-shirts. Today’s reads: Go, Local Sports Team, Go!

He is chronically shy but he still somehow conspires to over-share. He is very happy to talk about the attempted burglary that took place over twelve years ago when his mother was living alone in the property.

Oh my goodness! The attempted burglary! The broken window! The dropped knife!

Ying Yue doesn’t even want the popcorn maker. Ying Yue doesn’t like popcorn. She has sensitive teeth so finds corn problematic; the way it pretends to be fluffy and then a nasty piece of kernel sneaks up into the tight gaps between your molars and … and … ouch.

But Wang Shu has a keen eye for an opportunity. Always. Ying Yue hopes that Wang Shu won’t embarrass them both by snatching the popcorn maker from Charles and charging off with it. Second-hand goods are not considered propitious in Chinese culture, but Wang Shu is one of life’s great pragmatists. Wang Shu was raised by a group of kindly but brutish prostitutes in Guangzhou. Her sullen, calculating father was their pimp. Okay. Not even their pimp. He was the sullen, calculating half-brother of their sullen, calculating pimp. Wang Shu never had a mother – or nobody she could officially call a mother – just a succession of ‘aunties’ who sincerely tried to do their best for her (and failed). This is why Wang Shu is an obsessive deal maker. She has always made deals. It’s how she understands love.