‘Blah, blah, fucking blah!’ said Emily, and she ended the call, left the car and walked down the footpath. Her footsteps made a distinct sound: nup, nup, nup, nup. Maybe, she thought, Michael will have some kind of breakdown and stop turning up for work and Therese will leave him and he will spend all day writing letters of contrition to Emily and their friends. And well, then what?

Lucky lived in a four-storey apartment building with shirt-pocket balconies of rendered concrete. The windows had bare aluminium frames, dull eyes. A tight car park instead of a large courtyard. Emily buzzed inside near the driveway and Lucky, in a first floor flat, came to his door in a white shirt tucked into corduroy pants. He wore long sideburns and had a full head of stray silver curls.

‘Are you all right?’ said Lucky, noticing her unhappiness. ‘Would you like wine or coffee? Hey, I could fix you some food?’

‘I did nothing but eat and drink on the plane.’

The front door opened onto a narrow hallway and they walked past a bedroom and bathroom to a dim kitchen that smelled strongly of coffee. Emily sat at the kitchen table and locked her feet together on a patterned rug—a faded red field of concentric medallions that seemed to proliferate. A sideboard held silver sundae dishes and milk jugs and sugar bowls leftover from the franchise, glittering like Lucky’s grail. The paintwork showed blisters and scales here and there, but for the most part the walls were crowded with framed photographs of old restaurant outlets. Lucky looked sideways at Emily, as if reacting to something she’d said.

He asked: ‘Probably the first thing you want to know is why I live in a dump like this when I used to be a big-time franchiser, yes?’

‘It’s not a dump.’

‘As you’d know, I sold the franchise in the 1970s. That was a bad deal, no question. They paid me peanuts, took the businesses, took my name, and left me with one restaurant, which I ran independently. Two people named Sam and Shirley got hold of the other restaurants. Sam and Shirley: they probably sound like people in a country song.’

‘Like a couple in a sitcom.’

‘The worst decision I ever made, selling. I wasn’t too smart. People muck things up at weak moments. And after the shooting I made bad money decisions,’ he said. He took a breath and, as if confessing, continued, ‘Some days I couldn’t get out of bed. I developed mental problems.’