When Rutherford and Joseph had dropped him off, Tom had been too happy to be coming in from the cold to notice much about the house. All he had noticed was its warmth. Now, as his practised nose followed the faint smell of food to the kitchen, he noticed how very extravagantly furnished the house was – and how very, very silent. There was something remarkably lonely and definitely not new about the silence. As he walked through the stillness of Emil Coetzee’s house, Tom wondered if the lucky life that Emil Coetzee had had brought with it any regrets: regrets that could turn themselves into such a profound and established silence. He did not preoccupy himself with this thought as he followed his nose to a spacious kitchen adorned with every modern appliance, and where the silver of stainless steel glittered from every surface. A man who had built such a life for himself surely would have nothing to regret, Tom thought as he looked around for a place to start putting together his feast.

He could not remember the last healthy meal he had had. His staple diet, ever since Doreen had come to the end of her tether, had consisted of alcohol of varying quality (he was not very particular) and the cream doughnuts from Downing’s Bakery (he was very particular). He gleefully rubbed his hands together as he determined that he would have himself a proper English breakfast: bacon, sausages, eggs, grilled tomato, baked beans, buttered toast, and a cup of strong black coffee – the works; black pudding too, if it was there. He was already salivating when he eagerly opened the fridge. Because he could already see the meal in his mind’s eye, it took him some time to grasp the fact that there were no eggs, no sausages, no rashers of bacon – no meat of any kind in the refrigerator. There was milk and cheese and butter and many tubs of plain yoghurt and … no meat. In disbelieving desperation, Tom flung open the freezer compartment, but it was empty save for an icicled five-litre tub of Dairiboard Neapolitan ice cream. What was it that Emil Coetzee ate? Tom wondered as he slowly closed the fridge.

He laughed into the silence of the room as the thought occurred to him that perhaps Emil Coetzee was a vegetarian. What a preposterous notion! Of course Emil Coetzee was not a vegetarian, and, as though to prove this point, there were no vegetables or fruits in sight; not even one tomato he could grill.