I stepped off the bus, annoyed that I hadn’t checked the proximity of the stop to my ultimate destination. Now I had quite a long walk back along the main road.

On the street, I noticed that a delivery of square cakes in a clear plastic bag had blown off the doorstep of the bank. When I made a move to pick up the bag and return it to the doorstep, the bank manager came out of the heavy door. He invited me to help myself to as many cakes as I liked.

Then he asked whether I would like to look at some other objects that were being offered free of charge by the bank. He led me along a corridor to a tiny sitting room at the back of the building. En route, two women pushed past us, heading in the opposite direction. The first was carrying a plastic baby doll, the second a doll’s pram. I wasn’t sure that I would find anything of interest here.

Two disabled women seated in top-of-the-range wheelchairs occupied the sitting room. They didn’t appear to have anything further to give away. Instead they focused their attention on a tall, thin, dark brown, wooden cabinet.

‘Would you like to see the corpse?’ asked one.

Without waiting for my reply, she pulled open the cabinet door to reveal a tiny shrivelled body wrapped in a stained brown shroud. I hoped that this wasn’t meant to be my free gift.