‘No, but a neighbour of ours plays with them.’

‘Aw, it’s nice that you’ve come to support them,’ she said.

I reached into my bag for my purse, taking out the tickets as I did so. ‘Is anyone checking tickets in there?’ I glanced towards the other room.

‘Tickets?’ She placed Giles’s pint on the bar and turned towards the till. ‘There aren’t any tickets. It’s a free event. So that’s six-ninety, please. Contactless?’ She held out the card reader towards me.

‘But I paid…’ I looked down at the tickets in my hand, whilst imagining myself snatching Bill’s penny whistle from his grasp, snapping it in half over my knee and then putting the boot into his sound system.

‘Is your name Edith?’ I looked up to find a white-haired barman, I assumed the landlord, smiling at me.

‘Yes,’ I said, tapping my debit card aggressively against the reader.

‘The reserved table is right at the front. Just make your way through. It’s got your name on it.’

‘What reserved table?’

He reached under the bar and took out a glass, continuing to serve another customer. ‘The one you paid for,’ he said. ‘So just go on through. Anyone else sitting there, ask them to move. Come back if there’s a problem.’ And with that, he walked to the other end of the bar, with the drink he had just poured.

I frowned angrily and turned to Giles, handing him his pint. ‘Apparently, I paid over thirty quid for—’

‘So I heard,’ Giles chuckled. ‘That Bill, eh? He’s a little bit tricky, isn’t he?’

‘A little bit tricky?’ I exclaimed. ‘He’s a conman! I’m really pissed off and will be demanding a full refund.’

‘Will you indeed?’ said Giles, making a start on his pint.

I looked at him and sighed. ‘Oh, of course not,’ I admitted. ‘And I’ll probably buy tickets to his next gig too.’

‘And that’s what makes you so charming.’ He put his free arm around me and gave me a squeeze. ‘In any case, we’ve got a table out of it, which is great, isn’t it? Come on, admit it, you love a table. You hate it when we can’t get a seat.’

I smiled. ‘You’re right. I do.’

‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Cheap at twice the price. Shall we go and find it?’

We wound our way through the open double doors into the second room, which was about twice the size of the bar area. Once inside, our table for four wasn’t hard to spot, it being the only table in the room and situated front and centre, just a couple of metres from the band – or from where the band would be, when they finally appeared.