Having ended her relationship with AO, in the sitting room of my dead paternal grandmother, KA introduced us to her new partner.

When Niklaus and I shook hands, we recognised each other. I’d seen him at work just a few days earlier. I would never have expected KA to fall for a rough skinny man with rickets. The only thing that she and he had in common was that they both came from Liverpool. Even so, they supported different football teams.

I turned my attention away from the pair of them to concentrate on the job in hand: to select items from my grandmother’s estate. The mirror over the fire was attractive, but I had nowhere to put it. The Chinese rug was also lovely, but a corner was missing. In the end, there was nothing to interest me here.