That day started much like usual. In the morning at the Dick Vet there was a group of penguins walking down the corridor, they are cute as anything. We had a lot of budgies in, there were the usual dogs and cats getting treatment, some spiders, a mouse, three chinchilla rabbits. It was happy chaos. It always is in the Dick Vet. There was a sun bear from Edinburgh Zoo. It was also the beginning of a series of lectures by a professor who was up from London. They were set up to be held in the room next to the bone library. The professor wanted to see how I file bones, he wanted to see all the books where they are accounted for. I had to hide the mermaid when he was in so I just threw a blanket over her.

I was harassed – you may as well know that from the start.

Things have gotten hard here and I should have gotten out weeks ago. That’s why I have not written.

It all started with this old woman who was drunk and screaming at Mr Udnam about her daughters, says she had six and that they are all dead because of him, all red-haired girls apparently. I didn’t know what was going on and Morag who lives upstairs knocked on my door so I invited her in for tea. She told me a lot more about it. Apparently one of the red-haired sisters, the eldest one, had left home to become engaged to Mr Udnam; Morag said it was years ago but her aunt had known the girl Elise quite well. She told Morag that Elise disappeared one day and was never seen again, then a year later – her five sisters started a petition to find their missing sister. They go to the newspaper and the story is printed, then the very next night, they all die in a house fire. All of them. The smallest were just girls, younger than our niece! The mother of all those girls (the missing and the dead) is the drunk woman, so Morag says – and she was out on the close shouting and shouting. Mr Udnam got into her face and said something and then she ran off. I swear his eyes turned black for a second. Half an hour later we heard the sirens. The woman was found dead. Back broken. At the back steps to Waverley Station. It was a busy day. Nobody saw her jump. I just kept thinking – I don’t even want to write it down – but did she jump? Did she? I don’t think she did. I have seen what humans do to others. You know I have. Mr Udnam was going back into the stair and I swear he had shit himself, there was fear on his face.