‘Listen, Mother, I sound quite peculiar because it could be that something quite peculiar is just about to happen. I’ve got wind that we could be suffering some very severe food shortages over the coming winter.’

Mrs Kaiser sounded perplexed. ‘Food shortages? What do you mean? I haven’t heard anything about food shortages. I don’t eat much anyway. I’m on a diet.’

‘Mother, I know all about your diet. But you still have to eat something. And the way these shortages are shaping up, it looks like there may be hardly anything to eat at all, except canned stuff, and frozen stuff, and maybe meat.’

‘Peter – are you sure?’

‘I wouldn’t be calling you if I wasn’t sure. Now, listen, will you, and stop asking questions. I want you to call Mr Parker at the general store in Connecticut – yes, that Mr Parker – and I want you to ask him how much he wants for all of the foodstuffs in his store. Yes, Mother, all of them. Canned foods, dried foods, flour, TV dinners, everything. The whole damned stock, except for the toys and the corn dollies and the cigarettes. Right. Then I want him to drive the whole lot up to the house at Litchfield and get the key from Mrs Lodge and store everything in the cellar. Tell him to buy a couple of new deep-freezers if he needs to. Just make sure the whole contents of that general store are tucked away in our house, that’s all.’

There was a long silence. Then Peter’s mother said, ‘Are you feeling all right, dear? You’re sure you’re not running a temperature?’

‘Mother!’ snapped Peter. ‘Will you just do what I tell you to do? It could be a matter of life or death! Your life or death!’

‘Peter, I hardly think—’

‘What you hardly think and what’s actually happening are two different things, Mother. Sixty per cent of the wheat crop in Kansas has been wiped out by disease in two days. A third of the corn and soybean crops in Iowa are going down with the same blight. We’ve got tomatoes rotting in Florida, grapes rotting in California, broccoli dying in Oregon, potatoes going mouldy in Idaho… this whole damned country’s been hit by the biggest crop failure ever.’

‘Well, dear, I’ve heard about the wheat. That was on the news today. But nobody’s said anything about tomatoes, or broccoli. I’m not particularly fond of broccoli, in any case.’

‘Mother—’ said Peter, in a bottled-up voice.

‘Oh, very well dear. I’ll call Mr Parker. I’m sure he’s going to think that I’m quite mad. Shall I tell him to make sure to stock up again, because of the shortages?’