‘Didn’t he tell you? He has a business which manufactures shrunken heads. The kind you get in Peru. He makes them in Me-hico and exports them. They’re incredibly beautiful. He showed me a sales pamphlet. I mean disgusting but beautiful. Hand-stitched. Extraordinary. Some sell for thousands of dollars. People collect them. He makes them with carved animal bones and skins. He has a small team of ex-gangsters and addicts in Monterrey working for him. The whole enterprise is run like a kind of social programme …’

I think it would be fair to say that Mrs Alys Jane Drury (widow) has been thoroughly won over by Mr Frankin D. Huff (con-artist). The woman is besotted.

‘Rather odd, don’t you think,’ I muse, ‘that Mr Huff should come here with the express intention of finding out things about you, and then should end up talking endlessly all about himself?’ I pause, meaningfully. ‘Did it ever dawn on you that maybe …?’

‘It might all be just a ruse?’ Alys promptly fills in for me, sharp as a tack. ‘A “technique”? To beguile me? Uh, yes. It did occur to me, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh,’ I say, deflated, ‘well, good.’

‘It may interest you to know that several times in the course of our labyrinthine discussions he actually encouraged me to hold things back. He’d say, “Let’s not trespass any further into that, Alys. I can see how you’re struggling. Save it. Preserve it. Some things need to remain truly inviolate …”’

‘Are you serious?!’

After even only the briefest of acquaintances with Mr Huff, I find it difficult to imagine him readily employing the phrase ‘truly inviolate’.

‘Absolutely,’ Alys insists.

‘And then what?’ I ask.

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Well did you change the subject?’

‘Uh …’ Alys ponders this for a moment. ‘Sometimes. Yes.’

I roll my eyes and start to walk over towards the window, but am prevented from doing so by the tangled phone cord. I grimace and start the laborious task of unwinding it.

‘Well, for what it’s worth, he was still incredibly rude about Rogue’s weight,’ I mutter (smarting at the mere memory), ‘unforgivably rude.’

‘Rogue is horrendously overweight, Carla,’ Alys sighs, ‘Rolfie too, for that matter. Your father systematically overfeeds them. It’s awful – strange – cruel. You’re always moaning on about it yourself …’

She has me there, admittedly.

‘In Shimmy’s defence,’ she blithely continues, ‘it’s probably the expression of some profound, deep-seated emotional conflict or trauma, possibly relating to the persecution of the Jews.’

‘He is fat,’ I murmur, slightly shame-faced now, ‘but to be so … so forthright about it, and so mean, so horribly judgemental—’

‘Mr Huff has been resident in Pett Level for almost six weeks now,’ Alys interrupts, ‘and in that entire time has hardly breathed so much as a word to you, Carla. Perhaps you might be feeling a little … I don’t know … sidelined? Ignored? Piqued?’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ I exclaim, horrified. ‘I never had any intention of speaking to the man! I’ve been actively avoiding him. Why else did I hire Mrs Barrow to clean the cottage? To act as a go-between? I was actually glad he didn’t approach me – relieved.’