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‘You're late.’

Predictable. ‘I know, I'm sorry. In here?’

A decidedly masculine old woman with trousers up to her armpits was determinedly blocking my path. Cropped hair and a cravat. Very Noel Coward. Certainly not the distaff side. The place stank of gin and cats.

‘Shall I…?’ I managed to sidle past her, turning left into the sitting room as she looked over her shoulder at me suspiciously.

‘You're new.’

‘Yes, my mother couldn't make it today, so I've come instead. Hello there!’ This to a tiny, white-haired old lady, wrapped in a pink shawl and propped in a chair like a doll. Despite being eighty-five I could see she once would have been a doll. Good bones. Her rhuemy blue eyes lit up when she saw me.

‘Hello, dear.’

Noel Coward instantly hastened in to stand between us, hands on considerable hips.

‘Cakes?’ Toothless siren peered around her boyfriend's legs.

‘Yes, cakes in here.’ I put a paper bag on the coffee table in front of her. ‘And your lunch is— Oh…’

Her shaky, bony old hands had already reached out and torn open the paper bag. She was cramming a whole fairy cake in her mouth, spitting crumbs, beaming happily. Right.

‘She likes her cake first,’ her partner explained gruffly.

‘Oh. Yes, well, why not? Except – oh Lord.’ I lunged forward as I spotted one of Megan's long white dog hairs disappearing into her mouth. Would she choke, croak on the floor in front of me? I plucked at it before it disappeared, but her upper lip lifted too, as if I'd caught a fish. I tugged harder. Her lip came up again.

‘Oh!’ I let go suddenly.

‘What are you doing!’ barked Noel Coward.

Heavens. It was attached. I stared at the downy old upper lip, still taking its time to crumple back into place.

‘Nothing. Sorry. So sorry.’

Pink Shawl looked startled, but not unduly displeased. She smiled flirtatiously, coquettishly stroking her upper lip. Suddenly she began to warble in a reedy little voice: ‘If You Were the Only Girl in the World…’

Noel Coward's eyes hardened to bullets. I turned and ran, fleeing through the happily still open front door, and down the path.

‘All right?’ said Felicity as I flung myself in the passenger seat beside her.

‘Yes, fine,’ I breathed.

‘Only she can be a bit antsy, the butch one,’ she said, as she shifted into first. ‘She threw a vase at your mother once, when she thought she was being over-felicitous with the one in the shawl, who, incidentally, claims to have danced with the Tiller Girls. If she starts singing “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” you're in trouble.

I glanced back over my shoulder to see butch partner in the doorway, calmly loading an air rifle. She took aim.

‘Drive on!’ I squeaked.

As she did, a shot rang out. Felicity looked at me in horror; put her foot down.

‘I, um, think you might have to smooth some troubled waters next week, Felicity,’ I said, hanging on to my seat. ‘I've upset her.’

‘Don't worry, it's easily done. And she'll have forgotten in a week's time. None of them remembers anything beyond tomorrow. Now,’ she pulled up further down the road, ‘Mrs Mitchell has a stiff drink on the dot of twelve every day, and since we're late,’ she consulted her watch, ‘she'll be away with the fairies by now. Chopped liver, red dot. And Mrs Mason next door is black dot.’

I ran to the boot and hurried up the path, delivering to an old dear who was clearly flying – and why not, I thought, as she opened the front door with a flourish and swept me a curtsy. I hurried past her to the kitchen, put the box down, but as I made to leave, she stopped me by way of sticking an arm in my path, a glass of what was patently neat gin in her hand.

‘Definition of a teetotaller?’ she demanded.

I plumped for one of two. ‘Someone who knows their day isn't going to get any better?’

She threw back her head and cackled in delight, letting me pass: cheering me on my way as she knocked back the rest of the tumbler prior to settling down to her liver and bacon. Good on yer, girl.

Next door, a frail, wraithlike figure with a vacant expression opened the door in a diaphanous