NO ONE ASKED
"English woman. Five-foot-five with delicate features and short brunette hair swept back behind her ears. Good clothes."
She turned towards me. "Englishman, sixty-three years of age, overweight, balding, and bespectacled."
Thanks very much, I thought.
"The car is outside," Miranda said.
Miranda was short, stocky, and also soberly clad in a black coat with a black hat. Something was forbidding in her face, stiffness which continued downwards through the forward-thrusting abdomen to the functional toes of her boots. Her manner was welcoming enough but would continue to be, I reckoned, only as long as we behaved as she thought I should.