THE WOMAN WHO stands on the door-step is short and chunky. Her legs are like an elephant’s. They go up from her feet and down from her hips without contour or curve. Her hair is coloured a bright hot red. Henna hair: curly, messy. Already, around her face, curls are plastered to her sticky, pink skin. Already, there are lines of sweat where her vest has been trapped between the tumbles and turns of her stomach. It’s late spring, but the summer is here, already, slashing up the street in gleams and glares of hard, white light.

The woman who answers the door is very tall and very thin. She is wearing a suit: grey, tailored, costly. Her fair hair has been carefully coloured and blow-waved. Her face is made up in soft pastel shades. She wears amber in her ears and a matching pendant hangs around her neck, huge and heavy and cool. She could be thirty. She could be forty.