What? No! Why? Why? Why? Why Mr Huff? Why here? I cover my cheek, mortified, as Mr Huff stalks towards the door and enters.

‘I’ve been standing at the other side of that windowpane for several minutes, Miss Hahn,’ he chronically exaggerates. ‘What on earth are you up to? What is that?’ He points. ‘On your cheek?’

I drop my hand from my face.

‘What is that?’ he repeats, drawing closer. ‘Are they digits?’

I nod.

The waitress brings over my poached egg and places it down, looking at Mr Huff enquiringly.

‘Flying visit,’ Mr Huff informs her, with a flap of his ludicrously skinny grey-suited arms.

He then pulls out a chair and sits down.

‘Feeling a little better this morning?’ I ask.

‘I think that pie might’ve been slightly off,’ he confides.

‘The pie was perfectly fresh,’ I snap. ‘I ate a slice myself – remember? – and have been absolutely fine.’

‘I have a ludicrously delicate constitution,’ Mr Huff sighs, ‘very sensitive.’

‘Like a girl’s,’ I mutter.

‘4004,’ he reads, eyes slitting, mystified.

‘A delicate constitution hardly tallies with your reputation as an international jet-setter,’ I murmur.

‘Well observed,’ he concedes. ‘It’s my Achilles heel,’ he continues. ‘I feel things through my stomach – stress, unpleasant emotions. It’s a nervous thing. And yes – I openly confess – it’s perfectly risible in an adult male.’

I am signally nonplussed by this sudden show of humility on Mr Huff’s part – this unexpected show of vulnerability. Chiefly because I don’t want to share personal details with this man. I don’t want intimacy. I can’t afford for Mr Huff to become dimensional. That would be difficult – uncomfortable. I gaze over at him, perplexed.

Bad stomach aside, he seems to be in a state of high good humour; his face is shining, as if he’s delighted by something (my patent unease, perhaps?). It’s almost as if a great – an unendurable – weight has suddenly been lifted from his stupidly puny grey-suited shoulders.

‘Did you come into Rye on foot?’ I wonder, suspicious – almost jealous – picking up my knife and fork.

‘I found the rabbit sitting in a colander,’ he says, eyeing my plate. ‘Last night. It seemed a rather strange place to …’

‘I didn’t put it in a colander,’ I say (I did put it in a colander. It was that or the washing-up basin which was choc-full of dirty crockery).

‘Your friend, Pemberton, had set up a nice little home for it in an old sewing-machine cover.’

‘Bickerton.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Bickerton. Clifford Bickerton.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And the sewing-machine cover has a certain sentimental value.’

‘Really?’ Mr Huff’s eyes widen.

‘Yes. It belonged to the cottage’s former owner, Miss Vaughn.’

‘Oh.’

I pour myself some tea.

‘Sentimental value,’ he muses (almost under his breath).

I don’t respond. It was petty of me to object, I know. But that rabbit (as I explained to it, at length, in person, last night) is a tiny, unwelcome impostor at Mulberry. Just like Mr Huff.