She tapped her feet against his shins. Her legs were sheathed in red slacks. She kept crossing and uncrossing them while he peeked at the voluptuous spread of her thighs. The musky scent of patchouli oil floated his way. When it didn’t, he sniffed it out. He studied her plump, smooth hands, wanting to stroke them, imagining they would be a little spongy. He saw the way her fingers tapered slimly off into pastel-pink nail polish – discreetly chipped. She wore an antique gold ring with a ruby, which he imagined had been a gift, perhaps from this Brewster person. When she touched him to emphasize a point – a knee, a shoulder, a hand – she lingered, perhaps longer than was necessary, he wasn’t sure; she seemed to flash danger at him, as if daring him to respond. With each touch, he felt a palpitating charge, like a mild burn on his skin.

Stanley moved his stool closer to hers under the guise of shuffling into a more comfortable position. Their knees were now squashed up together.

She started to sing through the mirror, surprising him so much that he just about suppressed a burst of laughter. Hers was the coarse, booming voice of a knackered troubadour. She flung open her arms with all the melodramatic pathos of a Judy Garland, oblivious to the stares and nudges from the other people in the coffee bar. ‘Moon river … My funny valentine … Some enchanted evening …’

Without moving his head, Stanley nervously scanned the crowd. When he noticed their response shift from snickering shock to open admiration and rapidly thereon to audience participation, he relaxed into a grin that claimed pride and partnership in the ruckus Jessie was creating.

‘For years I hoped that one day I’d be rooted out by a record producer, but big wigs in the industry never deigned to come up to the Bletchington Working Men’s Club or the Middleton-in-Teesdale Social Society Annual Christmas Cabaret.’

Whether she could sing well was by the by: she was a black woman with the novelty of a Northern accent infused with what she imagined was a Texan drawl, making every interminable note twang with vibrato like a reverberating mouth harp. She was fond of vibratos. Truth is, she looked like everyone’s idea of a soul diva – a Gladys Knight, Roberta Flack, Gloria Gaynor – with large breasts that she liked to promote so that they rippled like the surface of a pond. But she turned mellow torch songs into raucous rock numbers and, thinking that she was displaying virtuosity, damaged her voice by pushing it once too often out of its natural range, imagining herself another Jessye Norman or Lulu as her mouth opened wide enough for the Hebden Bridge Brass Band to march through.