Mrs Barrow crosses herself and heads back to the kitchen.

‘Euceelyptus!’ she chortles. ‘Flies can’t abide the smell of it! Wait till I tells Carla about this!’

I remain in the room – inhaling suspiciously – and am soon drawn to my suit jacket which is slung over the back of a small, rickety whitewashed chair by the bed. I check the pockets (pure instinct) and draw out several handfuls of leaves – eucalyptus leaves. Eucalyptus leaves! Remember? From my little Hastings misadventure?

‘Mrs Barrow?’ I yell through, but am interrupted by a scream. Mrs Barrow has finally discovered the little rabbit in the bath.

‘It’s a rabbit, Mrs Barrow!’ I yell. ‘Just a rabbit – a dwarf variety.’

Mrs Barrow comes storming back through. ‘We has a strict no-pets policy, Mr Huff!’ she chastises me, hands on hips. ‘It’s right there in the contract: large print! Miss Hahn could happily evict you for less!’

‘It’s not mine!’ I insist. ‘I found it!’

‘Whereabouts?’ she demands.

‘In … in … in …in my vest,’ I respond (but not all that convincingly).

‘It’s been doing all its jobbies and what-not in the bath, Mr Huff!’ Mrs Barrow is not remotely mollified. Then, ‘In your vest?!’ she echoes, a few seconds later.

‘Yes. In amongst my vests,’ I modify. ‘Inside the small chest of drawers. I’m planning to phone the local constabulary,’ I say, ‘to investigate.’

‘You think it’s a matter of sufficient import to be bothering the police with?’ she asks, taken aback.

‘Why not, Mrs Barrow?’ I demand. ‘This was breaking and entering! Trespass! It’s not just a small matter of a couple of kids having a little bit of harmless fun at my expense. The bin alone – yes, fair enough. But this? It’s far more … more focused, more personal than that. These are the actions of a man or a woman with a serious grudge; these are acts of pure spite – considered acts, Mrs Barrow, and I naturally feel duty-bound to treat them as such.’

‘Trespass?! But you left all them doors unlocked, Mr Huff!’ Mrs Barrow interjects.

‘How’d you know that?’ I demand.

‘Lucky guess.’ She shrugs. ‘You always as leaves ’em open, Mr Huff. Old habits dies hard. I imagine that’s as what comes of living loose among all them free-and-easy types in the slums.’

‘An act of … of vengeance,’ I persist, refusing to be waylaid.

‘To put a rabbit in your vests, Mr Huff?’ she scoffs.

‘No. No! Not that so much as …’ I start to correct her, then, on second thoughts, ‘Yes! Yes! The rabbit! To move the bin and steal the bulb and … and the fish and the rabbit. Yes. Exactly.’ I nod.

Mrs Barrow considers all this for a few moments, which prompts me, in turn (I mean what’s to be considered?) to raise the stakes a little. ‘I don’t want to say anything that might alarm you unnecessarily,’ I murmur, ‘but I think it only fair to warn you that during my time working as an investigative journalist in South America I had a measure of involvement with …’ – I lower my voice a fraction – ‘with operatives from the higher echelons of the CIA – the highest echelons, in fact. This was a long time ago – ’68 – and they were by no means my finest hours, Mrs Barrow; I was sacked, ignominiously; disgraced – I can’t stand here and pretend otherwise – but there are still … there are wounds, festering wounds …’