‘You idiot,’ said Louise cuffing me gently.

She got up to make coffee and brought it in fresh with the smell of plantations and sun. The aromatic steam warmed our faces and clouded my glasses. She drew a heart on each lens. ‘So that you won’t see anybody but me,’ she said. Her hair cinnabar red, her body all the treasures of Egypt. There won’t be another find like you Louise. I won’t see anybody else.

I worked until the clock chimed twelve and there was a horrible heaving from upstairs. Gail Right had woken up.

I moved quickly to the kettle, sensing that some appeasement would be necessary. Would a mug of tea protect me? I put out my hand to Earl Grey and settled on Empire Blend. The Stand Up And Be Counted of teas. A man-sized tea. A tea with so much tannin that designers use it as pigment.

She was in the bathroom. I heard the judder judder of the water pipes then the assault against the enamel. Unwillingly the tank was forced to part with every drop of hot water, it wheezed to the very end then came to a stop with a dreadful clank. I hoped she hadn’t disturbed the sediment.

‘Never disturb the Sediment,’ the farmer had said when he’d showed me round the place. He said it as though the Sediment were some fearful creature who lived under the hot water.

‘What will happen if I do?’

He shook his head doomfully. ‘Can’t say.’

I’m sure he meant he didn’t know but did he have to make it sound like an ancient curse?

I took Gail her tea and knocked at the door.

‘Don’t be shy,’ she called.

I prised open the door from its stiff catch and plonked the tea on the bathside. The water was brown. Gail was streaky. She looked like a prime cut of streaky bacon. Her eyes were small and red from the night before. Her hair stuck out like a straw rick. I shuddered.

‘Cold isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Scrub my back honey will you?’

‘Must stoke up the fire, Gail. Can’t let you get cold.’

I fled down the stairs and did indeed stoke up the fire. I would gladly have stoked the whole house and left it roasting Gail inside. This isn’t polite, I told myself. Why are you so horror-struck by a woman whose only fault is to like you and whose only quality is to be larger than life?

Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam. Gail Right was at the bottom of the stairs. I straightened up and made a quick smile.

‘Hello love,’ she said kissing me with a suckering sound. ‘Got any bacon sandwiches?’

While Gail made her way through what was left of Autumn Effie, the farmer’s yearly pig to the slaughter, she told me she was going to change my shifts at the wine bar so that we could work together. ‘I’ll give you more money as well.’ She licked the grease from her lower lip and where it had dripped on to her arm.