The thick, weighty letter turned up in his mailbox.
He was a man who didn’t like surprises. Since childhood, he had avoided them. He liked things to be entirely as expected. Fewer unpredictable things had come into his life since retiring and he was happy about that. He thrived on the commonplace, he relished the mundane. He had a strong preference for what others might consider boring.
It was obviously more than just a letter, it was stuffed with something. The envelope was a strange turquoise colour, with a delicate blue filigree around the edges. It looked expensive. It was postage-paid with no stamp. It had been only partially franked by some postal authority in what looked like a foreign country. Although some of the letters were missing, he felt sure he’d never heard of it.
He took it in and dropped it on the kitchen table. He pushed his cross-word to one side and sat looking at it, while the kettle boiled. The address was certainly correct, handwritten in a bold script. He would have to admit to a mild curiosity, but that was all. What could anybody possibly want with him? He turned it over. He read ‘Sir Reginald Asquith’, in a similar script. It meant absolutely nothing to him.
The kettle clicked off.
As he poured his tea, a vague memory came to him. He felt sure he’d been at school with a boy named Asquith; Tim was it or Tom? He couldn’t remember.
After putting his cup down next to the newspaper, he picked the letter up, went to his waste recycling bin, lifted the lid and dropped it in.
Back looking at his cross-word he mumbled, “Where was I? Ah! Yes. Three down, five letters…”
