She stopped what she was doing and examined me from head to toe (no great distance, her gaze implied) exactly as she had done on the night of Fitzpiers’s party, except that this time she had a sharp knife in her left hand and not a stiff gin. She wasn’t wearing a party dress either, naturally enough, but old jeans rolled up to her knees and a slight sleeveless tee-shirt that clung to her breasts like a lover but also gave freedom to her arms, still wet and faintly reddened where the webbed feet of the God-sent gulls had rested. I still couldn’t be certain that she knew who I was. I was just on the point of putting paid to the suspense by formally introducing myself – of course, if I’d had any presence of mind I’d have leapt from the jetty into her boat crying, ‘Why stand you so amazed? It is I, Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade!’ – when she said, ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Mayor of Casterbridge.’

That wasn’t exactly the mayorality I had been imagining the grateful villagers pressing on me a moment or two before, nor did I at once understand the full force of the reference. (I honestly didn’t.) ‘I think you’ve got the wrong person,’ I replied. ‘I’ve never given away alcohol.’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘I hear you’ve given away just about everything else,’ she said.