Butterface

I am worried. Letters from Butterface grow increasingly strange. I thought having a penpal would be all sweetness and stationery but I am beginning to think I was wrong. At first her letters were wonderful. Epic poems about implausible kittens, recipes for treacle gin, her next-door neighbour's bank account details and little doves and orchids of folded Parma ham pressed between the pastel pages.

Recently, however, they have taken on a more menacing tone. Photos of me fall out of grubby Jiffy bags. Pages from my diary. She sends me shopping lists with untoward overtones. Cockles, root ginger, Mulligatawny soup. She has started to use inferior quality writing paper. I would go round and have a word, but the only address I have for her is mine.

Last night I peeked out between the curtains and she was there, standing under the streetlamp over the road, the orange light tinting her swimming cap and her mouth as round as the moon. I slept with a hand whisk beneath my pillow. I should have known. The people I invent never turn out to be personable.