She had considered matricide. Why was killing your mother so special? Worse than killing your wife? Your child? Worse than being a Guerilla/Gorilla? He looked quite nice in the photo they showed on the box. Six foot two, they said, brown eyes, fair hair, large nose, speaks with an educated accent. One would hope so from a person who had weathered Winchester, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. One would hope so but just as able to kill his mother as the Guerillas were able to blow people up, shoot them down. A lot of Guerillas had also been to the Sorbonne or Harvard or Oxbridge.

Matilda had thought, as she put clean sheets on the beds, that anyone with any gumption was capable of anything if brave or annoyed enough. She, when she had a mother, had often longed to kill her to stop the incessant prying and interfering, the possessiveness. Poor Matricide she had thought vaguely, her mind turning to her own children. Did they? Would they? They would like to, she decided, noticing that there was now a talk on roses purring out of the radio. They would like to but they were not among the brave – possibly Claud. Yes, Claud –

He had, this Matricide, killed his mother with a tea-tray. Marvellous! A heavy silver tea-tray. How nice to be rich. Had he when a child toboganned down the stairs on a tea-tray? Perhaps people who went to these posh educational establishments didn’t.

The spiders were a great worry. Old cottages were full of spiders of all sizes, some as large as a mouse when they scurried across the floor at night, others tiny, found in the mornings in the bath with wistful legs. Anyway, it being August and the Silly Season, the media babbled on about the Matricide every day, though it was true not quite so much latterly, rather favouring the Bride. He had not been seen since he left his mother’s house after banging her on the head with the tray, not been seen so not been caught.

‘Makes the police look silly,’ Matilda had said to Gus feeding him his midday mush. ‘Makes the police look idiotic, doesn’t it?’ Gus had made his throttling noises and Matilda had gone back to sweeping away her house’s character. ‘Dirt of ages,’ she had hummed to a religious programme. ‘Dirt of ages made by me! Oh, how filthy I do be.’ Well, it was all clean and tidy now, Matilda thought, as she drove, and although it’s latish, not sunset yet. Not quite yet, time enough for my picnic. I have tidied myself out of my house with the spiders. I betrayed Gus. Now I can have my picnic in peace, delicious Brie and Beaujolais unbothered by God in trousers. Petrol. It would be stupid to run out of petrol. She drew in at a garage and waited. No attendant came.