Next morning, I tell myself I have one last port of call before I pack my bag, say my goodbyes, and return to London. For long periods of the night, I’ve thought of nothing but face after anointed face staring at the figure in the patterned bandana as she circled and re-circled her little heap of scarlet towels. Fruitcake? Sylvester may have nailed it.

Beth’s shop is in the High Street between an estate agent and a funeral parlour. It’s mid-morning and a lingering glance through the front window confirms what Evelyn’s already told me. Until recently, this business apparently ticked along on a modest selection of eternity rings, retro watches, and that something special for the diamond wedding anniversary. Now the offerings in the window include a viper brooch in eye-catching yellow enamel, a rather lovely bracelet made of what looks like plaited wire with jewelled insets, and a pair of huge look-at-me earrings in shiny red plastic. Budleigh’s demographic is changing fast, Evelyn tells me, and here’s the living proof.

Inside the shop, I ask for Beth. The girl behind the counter is young, barely out of school.

‘She’s in rehearsal just now.’ She yawns, then checks her watch. ‘You know the public hall?’

I do. Evelyn and I were there on Saturday, listening to David Barrie. The entrance at the side of the building is open, likewise the door to the hall itself. Two days ago, as the Literary Festival came to an end, it was a full house, row after row of chairs. Now the floor space is empty except for a couple of chairs and a table. I don’t recognize the figure at the table, hunched over what I assume to be a script, but there’s no mistaking the woman on stage.

Beth is wearing dark green dungarees over a matelot T-shirt. Also, a pair of yellow-framed dark glasses, just a little too big for her face. As I tiptoe into the shadows at the far corner, she’s in the middle of some kind of monologue, and as far as I can judge this is an emphatically solo performance. A single spotlight pins her to the very centre of the stage, and from time to time she steals a glance at the script in her hands. I have, of course, absolutely no idea what this play might be, but it’s immediately obvious that Beth can’t act. No colour in her voice, no sense of rhythm, none of those little tricks that can grab an audience, and make it your own.

‘Was it my fate to be given in marriage? To bear this husband of mine four children? Did I ever foresee the pneumonia that bore him away? Or your letters, my beloved? Or this …?’