Denny Neale likes women and so takes the opportunity to hold his giant magnifying glass up into Avigail’s face to scrutinise her.

‘Who are you?’ he asks. ‘The wife?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Charles snorts.

‘Who are you?’ Denny asks, moving the giant magnifying glass across to Charles.

‘I’m Charles!’ Charles says.

Charles is currently feeling:

Indignant.

‘Charles is the vendor,’ Avigail adds (as if Charles’s identity must always henceforth be closely bound up with his selling of a property).

‘What does your T-shirt say?’ Denny asks. Denny is eye-level with the slogan on Charles’s T-shirt. He applies his magnifying glass to Charles’s T-shirt.

Charles refuses to tell Denny what his T-shirt says. Why should he tell this tiny, odd, invasive old man in dark glasses what his T-shirt says?

As if reading Charles’s thoughts Denny adds, ‘I am legally blind.’

He is still holding up his giant magnifying glass to Charles’s chest and trying to read the slogan on his T-shirt but its meaning eludes him.

Denny smells – very strongly – of quince (although Charles does not know what quinces smell like. Charles has never encountered a quince. Or if Charles has encountered a quince, then he hasn’t been aware of the fact that it is a quince. Quinces are basically an unknown quantity to Charles).

‘Are you wearing Britney Spears’s Fantasy?’ Avigail wonders, sniffing.

Avigail is scent-savvy.

Avigail has a great nose.

Charles frowns at Avigail. He has no idea what the hell Avigail is talking about.

Charles is currently feeling:

Mystified.

Indignant.

Irritated.

Invaded.

Wrong-footed.

‘Quince.’ Denny nods. ‘I make a special perfume from quinces by steeping the fruit in oil. Then I rub it on to my beard. Sometimes, at season’s change, I rub it on to my feet and on to my hands. Oh. And on to my elbows and on to my testicles.’

Charles is struggling to work out why a legally blind man (smelling very strongly of quinces – or so he says … Charles has no particular incentive to trust this man who has, after all, just broken into his home) would be working as a bailiff in North Wales.

‘I’ve been told before that Fantasy has a strong whiff of quince to it,’ Denny adds. ‘The other quince-heavy one is by Chanel – Chance Eau Tendre – but the Roman name that the scent is traditionally known by – although the Arabs used it, and the Greeks – is Melinum. It’s very comforting, very warm – somewhere between a pear and an apple.’

‘It’s an amazingly evocative scent.’ Avigail nods, remarking to herself on how many clauses there are in Denny Neale’s sentences (although she doesn’t actually know that this tiny man is called ‘Denny Neale’). Generally, Avigail finds, when someone you’ve only recently become acquainted with speaks in this particular fashion they are either incredibly interesting or intensely boring. Because they are so confident. And considered. They colonise space (air, the human/social geography) with language.

Just following these thoughts (in addendum – drawing up behind the thoughts with a dramatic skidding of brakes) is the word ‘testicles’.