Pearly rang the council. ‘I won’t be coming in now after all,’ he said. ‘It’s not worth it at this hour. Ask Mr Congreve to give me a ring tonight if there’s anything urgent.’ They would have a new mayor soon enough, and as Pearly drove home he imagined the surprise his resignation would cause. Maybe among some even a mild regret. The houses that he passed seemed smaller, less significant, like pieces on a Monopoly board, each in its small square. ‘Jesus, Pearly,’ he said. Now that everything was no longer imbued with his own complacency the world had become both less appealing and less secure. He had glimpsed the dark, scaly tail of something implacable and self-serving in his nature and feared its entirety.

When he reached home he had a sudden, jolting vision of Helen coming down the steps to tell him that Gumbo had died even though he knew his friend was on the mend, or that tragedy had struck Leanne in Cardiff, but there was nothing dramatic in his wife’s greeting. She asked after Andrew, and Pearly told her of their talk and Paul Wrinskley’s interview. ‘I don’t think he’ll come out again,’ he said in reference to Andrew.

Pearly was making a conscious effort not to inflict his own low spirits on Helen, but she knew him too well. ‘It’s okay. As you said yourself, you haven’t murdered anyone,’ she told him. ‘The world will keep turning. You did a stupid thing. Not the first and not the last for sure, but at least you admit it. We all do stupid things.’ They were sitting in the high-backed soft chairs by the living-room window. A small blue butterfly had come through the open doors to the patio and fluttered against the glass, an invisible obstacle to its return to freedom.

‘I’m going to go and talk to Deidre tomorrow. Tell her what I’ve decided.’

‘If you like I’ll come with you,’ Helen said. ‘Who knows, she may even want you to stay on.’

‘You’d come with me?’

‘Of course.’

‘That would be great,’ said Pearly. ‘And look, I’m sorry. I forgot to give the cheese to Andrew.’ Honesty in all was his new resolution. Pearly was good with resolutions. Another one was to avoid his worst self in future. He was determined to give that his best Pearly Gates shot.

A stunning collection of poems and photography.

David Eggleton wrote of Marshall’s poetry in the New Zealand Listener that ‘Above all, the poems are redolent of the South Island — all wild winds and dry hills, sleepy summer afternoons, the shimmer of light on lakes, snow like whitewash on the Alps.’ In addition his poetry captures the voice and perspective of the South Island, whether it is contemplating family or friends, love or mortality, the local landscape or further afield, through place or time.