The showroom he entered was full of gleaming cars. Each polished to within an inch of its life. To one side a family were ooing and ahhing at the salesman’s patter as he showed off a car to them.

None of this mattered to him. He wasn’t there to look at cars; he was there for another reason.

He was hunting. Searching for angels.

Off to another side he saw a middle-aged woman looking with doe-eyes at a smooth-looking salesman half her age. That was a sale which was sure to be made. He judged the salesman only wanted to put his hand in her purse, while the woman might let him put his hands wherever he wanted.

Towards the back of the showroom were a number of desks, two had customers busy signing their lives away for a prestigious badge, and over the partition of a third, he could see a young woman talking into a telephone.

He watched as she hung up and turned to scan the showroom. When her face came into full view he gasped with pleasure. She was beyond gorgeous. As he looked at her he knew she was an automatic candidate to become one of his angels.

The smile she gave him showed immaculate teeth, a pair of cavernous dimples and a beautiful face that was framed by auburn hair that tumbled onto her shoulders.

She stood and walked towards him.

When she rounded the desk he saw her figure, took in the lithe frame enclosed in a calf-length grey dress with white flecks. It clung to every part of her body and showed her supple flesh as she strode towards him, heels clacking as she proffered a hand.

Her perfume was delicate, with hints of a citrus fruit.

‘Hello there. Are you looking for anything in particular? We have a lovely 5 Series that’s very popular.’

‘Do you?’ He was relieved he didn’t stammer. The girl’s beauty had thrown him so far off kilter he didn’t trust himself to say a full sentence without sounding like an imbecile. Or worse, a pervert.

The girl smiled and pointed to a shiny red car. ‘This model is one of our bestsellers; would you like to take a look at it?’

‘Please.’ He tried a smile and hoped it didn’t come across as a leer.

‘Cool. May I ask what your budget is?’

At a loss as to what to answer, he looked at the car for a moment and spied the price on the stand beside the vehicle.

‘Thirty-five thousand.’

‘That’s good. Do you have a car to trade in?’

He couldn’t tell her about the old van he drove. ‘No, it would be a straight sale.’

‘Excellent. Well, the price on the stand there is for the base model rather than this one.’ She gestured to the driver’s side. ‘Why don’t you climb in, see what it feels like to sit in the seat of such a lovely car?’

He did as she suggested. When she climbed in beside him he pictured himself driving away with her. As mental images went, it was a work of art that could only be described as priceless.

A small part of his brain functioned enough to nod and coo when she pointed out the car’s many features. It wasn’t just her beauty that captivated him, it was the melodic tone to her voice. She had a cut-glass accent that made it sound like the bluest of blood flowed through her veins, and when he compared it to the harsher more guttural tones common to East Cumbrians, it gave him a glow warmer than the finest cognac ever had.

Meeting her was the highlight of his year. She would be one of his prize angels, if not the greatest prize of all.

He’d met her today through pure chance. He’d been on his way to Windermere, to a restaurant where the waitresses all wore flouncy skirts, when on an impulse, he’d parked up and then walked back a hundred yards to the dealership on one of the streets that wound their way into Kendal.

He always did his best to avoid the centre of Kendal; the one-way system baffled him, and he couldn’t recall a time when he’d visited the town and managed to leave by the same road as he’d arrived.

For the man, car showrooms were always fertile hunting ground for angels. Dress codes were imposed in many of them, and there was always a level of flirtiness that accompanied the saleswomen’s spiel. He would tour the ones round Carlisle and Penrith on infrequent occasions; too often and his prey would be scared off, yet for some reason, he’d never thought to explore the ones in Kendal.

It was all he could do not to agree to buy the car just to please her. Somehow he managed to resist the instant purchase, although he did agree to a test drive in the future. The allure of exclusive time in her company was too much to bear.

He said his goodbyes and took the card she handed him.

Sarah Hardy was her name and he had the sense not to make any jokes about resting on laurels or fine messes. Stan Laurel was a Cumbrian and had been born in Ulverston, a scant twenty miles from where he stood.

He’d only spent maybe ten or fifteen minutes with her, but she was already too important, too special, for him to mock, or even tease.

When he returned to his van he sniffed the business card, hoping to catch a hint of her perfume before he kissed it and placed it into his breast pocket. Next to his heart.

The test drive he’d let her arrange was a deception, but it would mean he could see her again.