He looked haggard.

Dyer stayed obstinately silent.

Arms crossed, with her back to them, Silvi squinted at the football game, which had resumed.

‘Pierre’s had a good first half,’ said Dyer, stepping out, he hoped, on a safe path.

There was something wrong and uncorrected in her posture, like a picture hung upside down.

‘Basil!’

His name was being called by a man in a faded yellow-and-blue striped scarf.

Further along the touchline were Lionel Updark and his wife.

Dyer had not spoken to Audrey Updark since her house-warming party in January. He kissed her on the cheek. This afternoon there was a change about her that he couldn’t put his finger on. Her hair? Then it came to him. She smelled different.

Something miraculous meanwhile had happened to Updark: his face had cleared up, and with it his outward hostility. He stood there spotless, not interested at all in discussing the game’s first half, but grinningly eager to talk about what had caused his skin to come out like a red cruzeiro banknote, and how the problem had been traced. It was his wife’s perfume!

‘They forgot to look at Audrey. No one thinks: “What’s the wife wearing?” Turns out I had an allergy to a scent she bought in Morocco.’ The cologne contained a psoriasitic chemical, musk ambrette, that was banned in the EU. Every time Updark walked into the bathroom after Audrey had sprayed herself, he had a facial reaction. “Allergic contact dermatisis” is what the cuckoos in Milton Keynes had diagnosed. He patted his cheeks as though applying aftershave. ‘The rashes disappeared seventy-two hours after they discovered the cause!’

Of course, Audrey had had to bin the perfume, but he’d bought her some Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir at Heathrow while on a reconnaissance trip to his next post. He wouldn’t tell Dyer where this was, although he did say that Lorna, who had been appointed his successor in Eynsham, had enquired fondly after him.

Inevitably, it was Leandro who scored the winning goal with seven minutes to spare. His Pelé-like kick from inside his own half was unexpected, completely. A divinely aided bolt that made Dyer think straight away of Samir and Marvar and the trigger for Marvar’s spherical laser. Fusion, football, a sudden wind from the south … it had the temporary effect of stunning everyone on the pitch. The Dragon never recovered.

‘I had no intention of scoring,’ Leandro blurted after the final whistle when Dyer came over to embrace him. ‘It was a total accident. I wanted to clear it, to send it to someone else. I thought I was going to cross it forward, and … oh, my gosh, is it going towards the goal? … and I stopped for a second and I saw it go into the goal and I saw the Dragon goalie reach for it and I saw it hit the back of the net – what?!’