17‘Where can you get cheap furniture around here, Shirl?’ Vince asked on his way out of the surgery on the following Friday evening. He was a man on a mission.
‘Plenty of those bargain homeware stores out on the highway,’ she replied. ‘No buggers ever in them.’
Elena had rung him in the morning to say she wouldn’t be a starter for dinner that night. ‘Will and I are going to a dinner party at his neighbour’s property. Pip and Sally Laidlaw.’
‘Sounds dead posh,’ said Vince. ‘Make sure you use the right cutlery and don’t tell any dirty jokes.’
That night he dined alone at their usual table at Fanny’s, reading a Henning Mankel crime story while he ate his prawn pasta, studiously avoiding eye contact with the other customers.
The next day he headed out early to the Homemaker’s Centre, part
