Sarah’s new dentist George seemed charming. Her previous one had proved a disappointment: he had a phobia about kissing and open mouths, which in the end had compromised his practice. Having a dentist who ran screaming from the room before you’d had a chance to rinse or spit didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But the new one, now. Besides being good at repair jobs, he was something of a craftsman, and (unusually enough) he made his own dentures for patients. There was something comfortingly  - what? - auto-didactical about that. Craftsmanlike.

But wholesome is as wholesome does. George’s eyes developed a rheumy gleam when dentures were mentioned, and Sarah grew anxious, lest her own teeth (of which she was fond) should be seen as candidates for extraction. She lay there in the chair at the end of her treatment,  and he murmured, “Would you like to see something really special?” Sarah didn’t like this, as it was a phrase usually accompanied by the sound of a zip being undone. But no. He brought a little paper parcel over, and inside it was a pair of dentures: “what do you think of these?”

What indeed? They were not gleaming, they were not even, but had clearly been manufactured for someone of curmudgeonly temperament and dubious oral hygiene. “Ah” said George, “ I made these for a lady who smoked and scorned cosmetic procedures. One of my masterpieces, this set. And when she died, I went to her husband and asked if I could have them back. Seemed such a waste to burden the crematorium with them.”

What? Sarah could hardly believe her ears. She had visions of George wresting the dentures from flaccid mouths in the Chapel of Rest and walking away with them clacking in his pocket like castanets. She nodded feebly, “very nice”. But worse was to come. George strode over to a little cabinet, and opened drawer after drawer of gleaming gnashers, whose owners would never smile again. And he crooned, “Hullo Mrs. Warboys! Morning, General Patton! Reverend Twinky, how do you like your drawer?”

Sarah began to calculate how fast she could run to the door from her semi-recumbent position,  and then George murmured, “I’m saving the best till last!” And with a flourish he opened a box that was full of false eyeballs: “Although I didn’t make these, I couldn’t let them go to waste!” Blue, brown, hazel: they gazed unblinkingly at Sarah, warning her of the perils of fortitude.

This was really too much.Where would it all end? Sarah was afraid George had other drawers full of bodily detritus, which he had saved against extravagance and waste: foreskins, fingers, toenails. She struggled to her feet and managed to run down the corridor, shouting, “George, you can have my last wisdom tooth! My next tampon!” Not that there would be any of the latter ever again.