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the acts for which a penis is designed. Partly because his physique set off these trains of thought, and partly because of his fine line in banter, Howard managed to discomfort and disarm in almost equal measure, so that customers almost always bought more than they meant to on a first visit to the shop. He kept up the patter while he worked, one short-fingered hand sliding the meat slicer smoothly backwards and forwards, silky-fine slices of ham rippling onto the cellophane held below, a wink ever ready in his round blue eyes, his chins wobbling with easy laughter.
    Howard had devised a costume to wear to work: white shirt-sleeves, a stiff dark-green canvas apron, corduroy trousers and a deerstalker into which he had inserted a number of fisherman’s flies. If the deerstalker had ever been a joke, it had long since ceased to be. Every workday morning he positioned it, with unsmiling exactitude, on his dense gray curls, aided by a small mirror in the staff lavatory.
    It was Howard’s constant pleasure to open up in the mornings. He loved moving around the shop while the only sound was that of the softly humming chill cabinets, relished bringing it all back to life — flicking on the lights, pulling up the blinds, lifting lids to uncover the treasures of the chilled counter: the pale gray-green artichokes, the onyx-black olives, the dried tomatoes curled like ruby seahorses in their herb-flecked oil.
    This morning, however, his enjoyment was laced with impatience. His business partner Maureen was already late, and, like Miles earlier, Howard was afraid that somebody might beat him to the telling of the sensational news, because she did not have a mobile phone.
    He paused beside the newly hewn archway in the wall between the delicatessen and the old shoe shop, soon to become Pagford’s newest café, and checked the industrial-strength clear plastic that prevented dust from settling in the delicatessen. They were planning to have the café open before Easter, in time to pull in the tourists to the West Country for whom Howard filled the windows annually with local cider, cheese and corn dollies.
    The bell tinkled behind him, and he turned, his patched and reinforced heart pumping fast from excitement.
    Maureen was a slight, round-shouldered woman of sixty-two, and the widow of Howard’s original partner. Her stooping posture made her look much older than she was, though she strove, in so many ways, to keep a claw-grip on youth: dying her hair jet black, dressing in bright colors and wobbling on injudiciously high heels, which she changed for Dr. Scholl’s sandals in the shop.
    “Morning, Mo,” said Howard.
    He had been determined not to waste the announcement by rushing it, but customers would soon be upon them and he had a lot to say.
    “Heard the news?”
    She frowned at him interrogatively.
    “Barry Fairbrother’s dead.”
    Her mouth fell open.
    “ No! How?”
    Howard tapped the side of his head.
    “Something went. Up here. Miles was there, saw it all happen. Golf club car park.”
    “No!” she said again.
    “Stone dead,” said Howard, as though there were degrees of deadness, and the kind that Barry Fairbrother had contracted was particularly sordid.
    Maureen’s brightly lipsticked mouth hung slackly as she crossed herself. Her Catholicism always added a picturesque touch to such moments.
    “Miles was there?” she croaked. He heard the yearning for every detail in her deep, ex-smoker’s voice.
    “D’you want to put on the kettle, Mo?”
    He could at least prolong her agony for a few minutes. She slopped boiling tea over her hand in her haste to return to him. They sat together behind the counter, on the high wooden stools Howard had placed there for slack periods, and Maureen cooled her burned hand on a fistful of ice scraped from around the olives. Together they rattled through the conventional aspects of the tragedy: the widow (“she’ll be lost, she lived for Barry”); the children (“four