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worn. In fact the upholstery seems to have been largely deconstructed by the dogs to tone in with the rest of the furnishings. The dogs settle themselves warmly over our feet, while their master pours us unidentified drinks out of a decanter. We sip them appreciatively. They taste … how do they taste? They taste worn. They taste brown.
    ‘Don’t ask me what it is,’ says Tony. ‘Some muck Laura got at the cash and carry on the ring road. I tell her to buy booze in Salisbury’s, then you know what you’re getting, you know they haven’t stuck the labels on a consignmentof battery acid. But she never takes a blind bit of notice. Frozen food? Same place. Know where I mean? Used to be a factory. Made slug repellent. Poor pet. Half a hundredweight of this, half a hundredweight of that, wholesale prices, breaks her back carting it all into the house. Well, what should we do without them?’
    I hope he means cash and carries. I suspect he means women. I avoid Kate’s eye.
    ‘God knows what’s holding her up.’ He looks at his watch. ‘She’s not doing dinner for twenty.’
    ‘Nothing we can do to …?’
    ‘No, no. She’ll have to get used to it. Did have a woman from the village who came in. Took umbrage, though. Also took twenty quid out of Laura’s bag. Twenty quid and umbrage. Bit much, don’t you think?’
    To take my mind off the disturbing picture of poor Laura, stumbling broken-backed about the kitchen, struggling with unfamiliar saws and cleavers to hack off chunks of complete frozen sheep for our dinner, I have a quiet look round the room, trying to guess what it is he wants Kate to give an opinion on. A vaguely ancestral-looking portrait hangs over the fireplace, discreetly blackened by the smoke of centuries. In the gloom around the outer edges of the room I can just make out prints of racehorses and hunting scenes, of the sort that brewers hang in the grill-rooms of suburban hotels, though reassuringly more mottled and fly spotted. A few modern still lifes and landscapes hang in an alcove. They were painted, I should guess – in the unlikely event of anyone wanting my expert opinion – by someone in the local Women’s Institute. It seems to me that the Churts may have very slightly overdone the irony of the iconography. I glance at Kate. She’s also sizing up the artwork. She glances at me, and quickly looks away. She evidently feels much the same. The Churts’tasteful avoidance of ostentation verges on the garish.
    A door opens in the gloom behind us. Tony looks up, and his humorous country gentleman’s character changes somewhat. His voice takes on a slightly sharper edge.
    ‘Problems?’ he inquires. The dogs and I jump politely to our respective feet. ‘What’s that thing round your hand?’
    ‘What does it look like?’ says Laura. ‘We’ll have to get Skelton back to fix that bloody stove.’
    She advances into the light around the fireplace, and I get rather a surprise. I’d been expecting, if not a broken old crone, then at least another comfortably worn accessory, like the sofa or Tony himself. But she’s entirely out of keeping with the iconography. Not much more than half his age, for a start – a lot younger than me, younger than Kate even. She’s thin and dark, and she’s dressed not in brown but in scarlet – a loose scarlet sweater that rises high around her neck and comes halfway down over dark velvet trousers. She smiles at us, but doesn’t offer her hand, possibly because it’s wrapped in kitchen paper. ‘How super,’ she says. ‘What a treat. So sweet of you to come.’ She makes her point: she’s not at all pleased to see us.
    She looks suspiciously at the glass that Tony hands her. ‘What’s this?’ she says. ‘Not that home-made muck that Skelton sold you?’
    ‘I thought it was the stuff you got from that foul place in Lavenage?’
    ‘What did it say on the label?’
    ‘Nothing. No label. That’s why I shoved it in the decanter.’
    I tuck my