‘It’s self-service,’ a man called to her, easing himself into the driving seat of his car and adjusting the safety belt across his stomach.

‘Oh hell!’ Matilda felt shame. ‘Bloody hell!’ She got out of the car flushing with hate.

‘Excuse me, could you – I can never manage, would you fill her up for me, please?’

The man there to take cash, give change, watch that there was no hanky panky came slowly out of his glass box. He exuded contempt, the chauvinist swine.

‘How many?’

‘Fill her up, please.’ Matilda waited by the glass box watching the man jiggle with the petrol pump, push the nozzle roughly into the tank, stand idly as the liquid gurgled in. Sexy in a dreary way, she thought. Inside the glass box the man’s radio was playing. ‘Here is the news.’ She listened to the weather, still fine and hot. The Prime Minister – the Common Market – the airport strike – the bomb alert – the hijack in Italy – the kidnapping in France – the five sightings of the Matricide seen in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bermondsey, Brighton and Kampala. High pressure over the Atlantic would continue for some days –

‘Any news?’ The man came back.

‘Only the usual stuff. What do I owe you?’

The man named the price. Matilda paid exactly counting out the change, which seemed to irritate the man.

‘Sorry. I thought it would help.’

‘Ah, you remind me of my mother, she’s pernickety too.’

Matilda felt insulted. There was something bourgeois about being pernickety.

‘Do you want to murder her?’

‘Sometimes.’ The man laughed. ‘Only sometimes.’ He was counting the money. ‘Guess he did away with himself. Here, you gave me lOp too much. Got remorse poor sod.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘Your loss not mine.’

‘Not quite as pernickety as you thought.’

‘No.’ The man grinned. ‘Did they say what ransom those French kidnappers are asking?’

‘I didn’t hear. I don’t think it said. Why?’

‘Good way to make a packet.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Well, goodbye. Thank you.’ Matilda got back into her car, leaving the safety straps unused. They hung dusty and twisted. She was afraid of them, afraid of being tied down, tied in. She checked that her picnic basket and bag were safe – bathing suit, lipstick, comb, pills for hayfever, pills.

‘The Pillage’. Rather a bad pun but it had been funny in the context he had used it in. ‘Now then,’ Matilda muttered, starting the engine, ‘don’t think of him, don’t think of Stub and don’t think of Prissy, think of anything else, Gus, no, not Gus. That fat man tying himself in so carefully. Did he feel loved and wanted? For crying out loud, how could he be wanted, so fat and ugly?’ She drove fast but carefully, not wanting an accident. The radio was playing pop. She turned it off and began to sing:

‘Pop, pop, poppity pop

They all pop in and

They all pop out