‘I shall call her Folly.’ Mr Hicks was writing slowly, breathing hard through his well-picked nose, wide-nostrilled. ‘Hairy as a fernfilled grotto.’ Tom’s voice from the past. None of her family liked Mr Hicks. Louise said he steamed open letters, Mark that he had bugged the call box outside – an unusual flight of fancy for Mark. ‘How else could he know so much about everything?’ She tried to hear Mark’s voice but failed. Perhaps one only heard the voices of the dead? Anabel claimed that he had put his hand up her skirts at the school sports, a thick fingered hairy hand slowly filling in the form. Mr Hicks had all the time in the world.

‘Folly, eh? And how is Claud?’ Mr Hicks knew all about the postman’s reign in Claud’s affections and never hesitated to put in a reminding pin. Matilda, waiting for the man to finish writing the few words and find the date stamp, leafed through the paper.

‘No sub-post offices robbed lately,’ she said brightly.

‘Busy murdering their mothers.’ Mr Hicks brought the date stamp down hard on the dog licence. ‘There’s your Folly all legal.’

Matilda interpreted this as a quick dig against sex between consenting males. ‘I don’t feel matricide and robbery go together somehow. I haven’t seen anything that he robbed his mother, only that he killed her.’

‘Only!’ Mr Hicks, still holding the dog licence between finger and thumb, stared at Matilda through his thick lenses which hid his piggy eyes, ‘Only! That sort of man doesn’t need to rob, he’s rich, isn’t he? A toff who went to Winchester and New College.’

‘What a delightfully old-fashioned word – a toff.’ Matilda regretted the days of long ago when sub-post offices were not guarded by barriers of glass. Mr Hicks, holding the licence in his horrible fingers, was safe. He held her in his power, fixed her with his glittering glasses. She could not snatch the licence and so she must wait for him to pass it through the hatch. Had those fingers pried up Anabel’s parts? One could never tell when Anabel was lying, she was a compulsive liar whose highest flights of fancy often turned out to be true.

‘Lots of our Trade Union leaders went to New College, Mr Hicks.’

‘But not to Winchester.’ Mr Hicks was studying the licence. ‘That school should be closed. It breeds more commies than any other school in England. I read it in a book.’ By ‘book’ Mr Hicks meant magazine. Matilda bit her lip.

‘Your party too, Mr Hicks.’

‘My party?’ Mr Hicks, fingers holding the licence, rested behind the glass as he leaned on the counter to see her better.