‘Droit de what?’

He smiled again. ‘The ancient right of the Lord of the Manor to deflower any local virgin.’

‘Dream on, you wouldn’t know what to do with a virgin.’ She tried to stop herself in mid-sentence, but it was too late, it came out.

‘Quite right – I never had that experience, my dear.’ He delivered the trump card she could not defend against. She’d lost her virginity to his original best man three weeks before their wedding. Maurice had caught them himself, in flagrante. It was a hold over her that had served him well for three decades.

‘Anyhow,’ he added, defensively. ‘You hate parking and your car has self-park. You said you liked that feature.’

‘Only because I can do it when I’m outside the car, so no one can see me in it.’

Across the road, a tall, gangly man in his late-thirties climbed out of the BMW and tossed his head, shaking his mop of fair hair from his eyes. Dressed in a leather jacket over a black polo-neck jumper, skinny jeans and boots, and arty glasses, he stood looking approvingly up at the front of his house, which was bathed in winter sunlight, then around and across the street. He clocked the twitch of the blinds in the large, rather ugly house over the road, with the flashing blue and green Christmas lights adorning the porch and the hideous Santa’s grotto that covered most of the garden.

‘That must be him,’ Mrs P-W said. ‘The painter!’

‘Could come in handy when we need to redecorate.’

‘Ha ha,’ she said. ‘Jason Danes is famous. He’s the talk of the village shop.’ She smiled, coquettishly, at her husband. ‘Just a thought – why don’t you commission him to do a portrait of me for my birthday?’

‘Why would I want that? I’ve got plenty of photographs of you.’

‘That’s not the same. God, you used to be so romantic, Maurice! Don’t you think a portrait would be a romantic gesture?’

He looked at her. She wasn’t quite the svelte beauty he’d first dated, although if he was honest, neither was he still the dashing cavalier of his youth. Both of them now sported double chins that were visual testament to the laws of gravity.

‘Hmmm,’ he grunted. ‘I imagine he charges a fortune.’

‘And I’m not worth it?’ She peered through the blinds again, very cautiously this time. Then she gasped. ‘Please tell me that belongs to the removals company and not to these… these people?’

A small, bright-pink refrigerated van, emblazoned with the legend TASTE SENSATIONS – EMILY’S PANTRY, the words separated by a floral logo, pulled up alongside the BMW. An attractive, red-headed woman in her early thirties got out, wearing a baggy crimson parka over black tights and calf-length boots.

‘What does she have in there, then, Danish pastries?’ Maurice said.

‘Huh?’ his wife said blankly.

‘The Danes. Danish pastries. Geddit?’

‘You’re full of humour today – you been on the sauce or something?’