From the window, Pearly saw her arrive, the car wipers on full as she came up the drive. He left the front door open and went out with an umbrella, but the rain stopped suddenly as if in conscious courtesy, and they walked to the house without need of cover. Pearly had pictured a young, effusive woman, but he judged Claire to be in her fifties. Tall, sallow, quietly dressed yet with a conspicuously bright lipstick. Her voice was the most significant attribute of distinction. Clear, unhurried, carrying her well-ordered sentences with a slight accent that enhanced their authority. Yes, she’d worked for some years in France, she said, and then for a time in Québec. ‘I stay at home now,’ she said. ‘Life’s more and more hectic overseas, and I’ve grown lazy.’

Pearly, like most Kiwis, was always impressed by anyone who spoke another language: it seemed to him an almost magical accomplishment. Had she not been a stranger and he conscious of being mayor and the subject of her interview, he would have asked her to say something in French, as a child might do, to hear the novel musicality of a foreign tongue.

‘Should I call you Pearly?’ she said. ‘I know almost everybody does.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘I’ve done my homework. I even stopped in the town on my way here and asked shoppers at random about you. They all called you Pearly, as did the people I talked to before coming down. People you played sport with, worked with, crossed swords with. Pearly this, Pearly that, they’d say. Only Esther Hall called you Pat.’

During the meal most of the conversation was between Claire and Helen, for all three were familiar with the customary procedure for formal interviews, and aware that later Helen would leave them and Claire and Pearly would get down to business. Pearly could see that the two women got on well and that pleased him, for it ensured a relaxed atmosphere.