It didn’t seem possible to Carmen that something so solid, so intertwined with the life of the town and its citizens—with its stained-glass window depicting the ships the men built up the road on the River Clyde, and its coffee shop selling French cakes and scones and disdaining the very concept of something as fancy as a latte—would ever shut its doors. It was the heart of the town.

But the town seemed finished. Dead. The high street was nothing but thrift shops and mobility-scooter rental shops and money-sending places and the occasional doomed enterprise by the council to sell local paintings or craft.

People wanted the town center to work, but not quite enough to pay for parking when the out-of-town retail park didn’t charge you and was all shiny and had a Wagamama.

People wanted the town center to work, but not really enough to pay £17.99 for a bone china mug with a shepherdess on it when they could get something perfectly serviceable for under a fiver on Amazon. Or to traipse all the way into town for three meters of pink ribbon only to find there wasn’t any pink ribbon in stock and they’d have to have burgundy, even though they wanted pink and actually it would have taken two minutes to click on the precise shade of pink they wanted on that online store and get it delivered the following day.

Carmen got it. She was as guilty as anyone else at convenience shopping, even when she was in town every day. Plus, who used napkin rings these days? How many scatter cushions could any sane human even buy in her life? And bridesmaids didn’t make their own dresses anymore from the big swathes of purple and pink satin (sateen if you were economizing). They ordered them from overseas, from where they arrived late and ill fitting, and they would have to come in, red-faced, asking for advice on adjustments and hemming and buying the odd spare zipper at the very last minute.

But only three days after the Christmas chat, it happened. They were summoned. Idra loudly protested that she should have poisoned that bloody mug, as Mrs. Marsh, who must have been past retirement age—Idra reckoned she was ninety—took a certain pleasure in telling them they were all getting their pink slips, or, in her smart, poshed-up elocution voice, “sadly being made redundant.”

She looked around through her wide glasses with the pastel rims and patted her short, sprayed-down hair.

“Some of you, I’m sure, will get excellent references and find another job without any trouble at all,” she said, looking pointedly at her favorite, bloody suck-up Lavinia McGraw.

At this, Carmen and Idra glanced at each other, and Carmen got that awful feeling when you know you’re going to laugh at something incredibly inappropriate.