The Visitors

Here comes the bride

Forty inches wide

They had to knock the church door down

To get her bum inside

They were the same age as most of her schoolmates’ grandparents, and their lives had the sepia tinge of a bygone era when people rode penny-farthings and had kitchen maids.

The thought of strangers running around the house horrified her. What would they think of all the mess? The mould on the bathroom wall, all those broken appliances that John refused to let her throw away, yet never got round to repairing, the tins of food piled in the kitchen, and years and years of newspapers blocking the hall? And that Tupperware container on the top shelf of the fridge, the one full of black slime and greeny-blue fur; she wasn’t even sure what it had in it to begin with, and now she was too frightened to open it.