I refused this offer and he upped it a bit.

Electrical power would be restored to the village. I would be made mayor of the village. Being mayor would entitle me to certain privileges. I would draw up a list of these. Norman and I would be supplied with food and drink and fags and pretty much anything else that our little hearts desired. And Norman would receive a box of Meccano. A big box. The biggest box.

Mr Cradbury agreed to everything. But then I knew that he would. I knew that I could ask for pretty much anything I wanted, and I knew I’d get it too. Because I’d been expecting the arrival of Mr Cradbury, or someone just like him. I knew that it had only been a matter of time before I was called upon to write the Doveston’s biography. I’d had long enough to reason things out, to understand what had really happened, and why, and who was behind it all. So I didn’t ask any more questions. I just shook Mr Cradbury’s hand.

And so I wrote the book. And that was it. You’ve read it. So why are there still some pages left to go, you may ask. Wouldn’t it just have been better if it had gone out earlier on a chorus of ‘Here we go’? Well, perhaps it would.

If you could examine the original manuscript of this book, which, I am told, is to be stored in the New State Archives, you would see that up until this paragraph, it is all hand written. Yet these final chapters are typed.

They are typed upon a 1945 Remington Model 8 manual typewriter.

The Newgate Prison typewnter.

All statements have to be typed up. It’s one of the rules. It’s the way things are done. There’s not much point in arguing.

I wrote the rest of the book in longhand. It took me months. But I do have a photographic memory. I didn’t need any notes made in Filofaxes, or access to the Doveston Archive. I had it all in my head.

All I had to do was write it down. Tell it the way I saw it. How I remembered it. How it really was.

On the day of my arrest, Norman and I had been fishing. Private access to the trout stream is one of the perks you get, being the mayor.

It was nice to be away from all the noise of the builders I’d had Mr Cradbury bring in to rebuild Castle Doveston. We’d had a splendid afternoon and Norman had caught four large troutish things, which didn’t give off too much of a radioactive glow. We were whistling and grinning and pushing each other into bushes as we shuffled home for tea, and I remember thinking at the time that even after all we’d suffered, we still seemed to have come through smiling.

I’d handed the finished manuscript to Mr Cradbury on Edwin’s Day last. Which was the day before yesterday. Norman and I had long ago renamed the days of the week. There was Edwin’s Day, then Norman’s Day, and then we’d got a bit stuck. So we’d had Edwin’s Day II and Norman’s Day II and so on. But that didn’t work, because there were seven days in the week.

So Norman had said, ‘Well, poo to it. If we’re renaming the days anyway, why bother with a seven-day week? If we had a two-day week instead, it would be far less complicated.

He was right, of course.

The only problem was that certain people, and I will not name them, kept saying it was their day when it wasn’t. When it had, in fact, been their day the day before.

So Norman hit upon another idea.

As we had to take it in turns to empty the latrine and this really did have to be done on a daily basis (as it was only a very small latrine and neither of us wanted to dig a bigger one), Norman said that we would easily be able to remember whose day it was if their day coincided with the day they emptied the latrine.

I asked Norman, Why not the other way round?

Norman said that it was the fact that he’d known in advance that I’d ask that question, which had decided the matter for him.

I have still to figure out just what he meant by that.

So, as I say, we were shuffling home from the fishing, whistling and grinning and pushing and whatnot, and I was saying to Norman that hadn’t he noticed how we always had good fishing on Edwin’s Days? And good hunting and good birds’-nesting? And didn’t it seem just the way that Edwin Days were particularly lucky days for that kind of thing? In fact much nicer and sunnier days all round than certain other days I could mention.

And Norman had asked whether I’d noticed how on Edwin’s Days the latrine never seemed to get emptied properly? And wasn’t that a coincidence? And perhaps we should rename Edwin’s Days

Days.

And I was just telling Norman that even though in my declining years, of failing eyesight and somewhat puffed in the breath department, I could still whip his arse any day. Be it a Norman or an Edwin.

And Norman was singing ‘Come over here if you think you re hard enough’, when we saw the helicopter.

It wasn’t a real helicopter. Not in the way we remember real helicopters to be. Real helicopters used to have engines and lighting-up dashboards and General Electric Mini-guns slung beneath their hulls.

That’s how I remember them, anyway.

So this was not what you’d call a real helicopter.

This was an open-sided, pedal-driven, three-man affair. It was all pine struts and canvas sails of the Leonardo da Vinci persuasion. Old Leonardo. Which meant dead in Brentford rhyming slang, didn’t it?

The helicopter was parked close by the building site. There didn’t seem to be too much in the way of building going on — a lot of down-tooling and chatting with the helicopter’s pedal men, but that was about all.

‘I’ll bet that some high-muck-a-muck from the publishing company’s come to tell them to pack up their gear and go home,’ said Norman.

‘Why would that happen?’ I asked. ‘Mr Cradbury promised to have the house rebuilt if I wrote the book.’

‘Your faith in Mr Cradbury is very touching,’ said Norman. ‘Have you ever thought to ask yourself just why his company is being so generous?’

‘Of course.’

‘And what conclusions have you come to?’

I did not reply to this.

A builder chap came shuffling up.

‘There’s a toff from London to see you, your mayorship. He’s come about that book you’ve been writing. He’s waiting for you in the trophy room.’

‘Well, there you go then,’ said Norman. ‘It was great while it lasted. But if you’d listened to me when I told you to take at least five years wnting that book, at least we’d have had the house finished.’

‘A book only takes as long as it takes,’ I said. ‘I’d better go and speak to this toff.’ I paused and smiled at Norman. ‘We have had some laughs, though, haven’t we?’

‘And then some,’ said the ex-shopkeeper.

‘Its been good to know you, Norman.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m glad to have called you my friend.’

‘Have you been drinking?’ Norman asked.

I shook my head. ‘I’ll see you when I see you, then.’

‘Er, yes.’

I took Norman’s hand and shook it.

And, leaving him with a puzzled look upon his face, I shuffled away.

He had been my friend and companion for almost fifty years. I would never set eyes on him again.

I shuffled past the builders and the helicopter-pedallers and I shuffled down the worn-down basement steps and along the passageway to the trophy room. And I stood for a moment before I pushed open the door and my hands began to tremble and my eyes began to mist.

Because, you see, I knew.

I knew what was coming.

I’d seen it and I’d felt it and I knew that it had to happen.

I did a couple of those up the nose and out of the mouth breathings, but they didn’t help. So I pushed open the trophy-room door.

The London toff was standing with his back to me. He wore a long black coat with an astrakhan collar, over which fell lank strands of greasy white hair. He turned slowly, almost painfully, and his head nod-nodded towards me.