I knocked at the door of a house with a parceI, but nobody came.

I knocked at the door but nobody came. While I was waiting, a man in a blue suit walked past in the street, “Carry it out within the usual framework...” he said into his phone. I knocked at the door again but nobody answered so I went to the next house along where I’d seen a woman in the front-room watching the television. I knocked and rang the bell but the woman didn’t come. I knocked again and she still didn’t come. As I made my way back to the first house to leave a note, I glanced up to see whether the woman was still watching the television. She wasn’t, she was standing with her back against the wall in the lee of the chimney breast, head turned away, trying to be invisible.

A man with a Border terrier, shorts and a Superman T-shirt that was too small for him had stopped to talk to a woman in the street. “Honestly," said the woman, "she’s such a weirdo, she just phoned me and said ‘I just had to pick up a dead pigeon. What are you up to?’”