How did you kill that hat?
The well-dressed lady turned the fur collar over in her hands and fixed me with a withering stare. ‘Is this real fur?’ I was helping out in my friend’s clothes shop, a fashionable haunt in a chichi area of south-west London. ‘Yes,’ I said, bracing myself. She stroked the luxuriant fur, then asked, ‘What is it?’
‘Fox?’ I said, making the answer a question, as you do when you are expecting protest.
‘Where did the fox come from?’
This was too much.