Some of the costumes had not been worn for years, shoved at the back of the shop in piles that teemed with moths and spiders with their contrails of silk. The fabrics had lost their luster. A button scratched here. A loose wisp of cotton there. If one pressed an ear to those discarded bundles, the whispers of past glories, of balls and parties, would play like a gramophone record, scratches and all.

But no one ever came to the shop to hire a fancy dress outfit.

They came for the dolls.

Because beyond the costumes, past the overfilled racks and the wigs made from human hair, the riding boots and leather crops, the buckles and belts and shoes with bows, was a room.

A man worked alone at a trestle table, and he did not look up. A ceiling fan worked noisily to ease the thick heat. A lamp bent over in submission lit his way. Sixteen porcelain heads rested in neat rows of four at the far end of the bench. White and smooth. Hairless. Blank-faced.

On the paint-spattered surface in front of him, he was bringing one of those dolls to life.

For a man of his size, his brushstrokes were deft and precise. A delicate sweep of black for the eyebrows. Daubs of green for the eyes. A brush so tiny it was lost in his hand, another held in his mouth. Eyelashes. A speck of white, and the suggestion of a tear.

To him, the eyes were the most important part of the face. He believed each doll should tell a story with her eyes, that to look into their depths would be to learn something new.

He wore an old pair of shorts, thinning at the knee, and his ill-fitting T-shirt was full of holes. He wasn’t the type to bother about haircuts or shaving or mobile phones. His house was unkempt and unloved, even though he could afford better. His interest in appearance stopped with his creations.

His dolls sold for a great deal of money.

They were featured in specialist magazines and drew crowds at toy conventions. He had sold several to a very famous celebrity couple for each of their three daughters. Collectors from New Zealand to France queued up each year for a new Lovell doll, waiting patiently for photographs of his progress amid discussions of hair color and clothing and the shade of their lips.

They were the work of a dedicated craftsman.

Each took several days to finish, their pretty heads needing firing between each application of paint, which shimmered with its own translucency. He breathed in the smell of his work, of turpentine and oil and mixing medium, and it settled him.

After an hour, the man, whose name was Trefor Lovell, flexed his fingers and put down his brushes. He placed his latest creation on a shelf to dry, opened a drawer and reached for the talking pull-string doll he’d owned since 1971. Her head was much bigger than her body and when he pulled on her string, a recorded voice played, crackly with age.