‘He is a difficult man, the mayor,’ said Patience, but Pike wasn’t listening, he was looking out through the cell’s tiny window at the maroon peaks of the mountains and when, at the end of an hour, he had asked no more questions about the hostel or anything else, or shown any desire at all to enter into any kind of conversation, Patience put her needles together and placed the finished bootie in her basket and told him that she would come again in the morning if he’d like her to.

Pike yawned and without turning his eyes from the window told her to suit herself, it was all the same to him whether she came or not. In another week he would be dead and that would be that.

Over the next three days, Patience visited Galen Pike every morning.

She brought fresh biscuits and cordial and asked Pike if he wished to talk, or have her read to him. When he didn’t reply she took out her knitting and they sat together in silence.

On the fifth morning, a Sunday, Patience arrived a little later than usual, apologising as she stepped in past Knapp when he unlocked, and then locked, the barred door behind her; she’d been at Meeting for Worship, she said, and there’d been a great quantity of notices afterwards, mostly on the subject of the hostel, as the mayor had indicated he’d be making his decision shortly, possibly as early as tomorrow.

Pike yawned and spat on the floor and said he didn’t give a shit where she’d been or what she’d been doing and the only thing he wanted to know was how she’d got that pretty nose.

Knapp, in his office, peeped out from behind his newspaper. He’d never known any of the men to be so unmannerly to Miss Haig. He craned his neck a little farther to see if anything interesting would happen now, if Patience Haig would put Pike in his place, or maybe get up and walk out and leave him to rot in there by hisself for the last three days of his life like he deserved.

‘I fell off a gate, Mr. Pike,’ said Patience. ‘When I was nine.’

‘Ain’t that a shame,’ said Pike in his nasty drawl, and Knapp kept his eye on Patience, but all she said was that it was quite all right she’d got used to it a long time ago and didn’t notice it unless people remarked on it, which in her experience they never did unless they meant to be rude or unkind, and after that the two of them settled into their customary silence.

Patience took out her knitting.