The tea was stewed—too bitter for his taste—but she’d brought him a slice of homemade ginger cake, and he nibbled on its edges.

“How have you been, Mrs. C?”

“Mustn’t grumble.” She sipped her own tea, hands trembling slightly. The beginnings of Parkinson’s? he wondered. Or old age. Her front door was half-open, and he glimpsed the shadow of her wheelchair in the hallway.

“Terrible business, isn’t it?” He tipped his head in the direction of the woods before taking another mouthful, crumbs spilling down his shirt.

She nodded, but her gray curls did not move, set solidly in place with hair spray. The spiderweb cracks on her face deepened. “Awful.”

“Do you think they’ll catch him?”

“They’re taking their time about it.” She glanced across the street to the officer standing by the police cordon. “Look at him, poor devil. He must be parched. I think I’ll make him a cup of tea, too.”

When the postman had finished his cake, he tipped his too-strong tea into the bushes and watched her limp across the road with a tray of hot drinks for them all. Such decency was a breath of fresh air. It cost nothing to be kind.

Plenty weren’t. He’d seen it all over the years. And, even in the short time he had worked here, he’d become far more intimate with the residents of The Avenue than they might have been comfortable with.

He knew who had received a court summons, who paid child support and who was in trouble with the bank.

He knew who got up early and who slept in late, who had children and who did not. He knew one householder had moved in his girlfriend while his wife was overseas, tending to her sick mother.

He knew that new people had moved into number twenty-five.

He knew all their secrets.

And like so many of the residents of The Avenue, he had one of his own.

16

Now

On the day we moved into The Avenue, we celebrated with cherryade from the Corona man and gammon and pineapple with boiled potatoes.

Birdie was giddy with excitement. The flat had been cramped and the smell of dirty knickers had seeped through the floorboards from the fishmongers below.

But the house represented the pinnacle of every one of Birdie’s dreams of success—three bedrooms, two baths and a patio. Even the rats that migrated from the copse that ran along the bottom of the garden were a minor irritation, exterminated with pellets of Rodine that came in a red box Birdie kept in the pantry. All life sucked from their stiff little bodies.

The shop was doing well and our circumstances had changed. Lots to eat. A lady who came in to clean. But Birdie still made me earn my keep by working the till on the weekends and after school.

“I don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry robbing me blind,” she said. “Let’s keep it in the family.”

But I missed the flat.