He had a few rentals to attend to — changes of tenancy, redecoration, damp problems — and then a sale up the coast, so he didn’t return to the Right Plaice for a few weeks. He ate his haddock and mushies, and read the paper. There was some town in Lincolnshire that was suddenly half Polish, there’d been so many immigrants. Nowadays, more Catholics went to church on Sundays than Anglicans, they were saying, what with all these Eastern Europeans. He didn’t mind one way or the other. Actually, he liked the Poles he’d met — brickies, plasterers, electricians. Good workers, well trained, did what they said they would, trustworthy. It was time the good old British building trade had a kick up the arse, Vernon thought.

The sun was out that day, slanting low across the sea, annoying his eyes. Late March, and bits of spring were getting even to this part of the coast.

“How about that swim, then?” he asked as she brought the bill.

“Oh, no. No swim.”

“I’m guessing you might be Polish.”

“My name is Andrea,” she replied.

“Not that I mind whether you’re Polish or not.”

“I do not also.”

The thing was, he’d never been much good at flirting — never quite said the right thing. And since the divorce he’d got worse at it, if that was possible, because his heart wasn’t in it. Where was his heart? Question for another day. Today’s subject: flirting. He knew all too well the look in a woman’s eye when you didn’t get it right. Where’s he coming from, the look said. Anyway, it took two to flirt. And maybe he was getting too old for it. Thirty-seven, father of two, Gary, eight, and Melanie, five. That’s how the papers would put it if he was washed up on the coast some morning.

“I’m an estate agent,” he said. That was another line that often hampered flirting.

“What is this?”

“I buy and sell houses. And flats. And we do rentals. Rooms, flats, houses.”