Graham’s mother had asked for three things. White lilies. A closed coffin. And for the love of Christ, keep Graham away from the money.

At the chapel door, Graham handed Aunt Pearl a little card. “Your first three minutes of grief are complimentary.”

“I washed that woman’s arse for eleven years,” said Pearl. “What does that get me?”

Graham consulted the seating chart. “An aisle.”

Halfway through the eulogy, the vicar turned to a page he hadn’t seen at rehearsal. “This next cherished memory is brought to you by Badger & Sons Damp Proofing.”

Pearl opened the coffin. Inside lay a sack of turnips in a good wig.

From the back pew his mother stood up. “I wanted to see what you’d do, Graham.”

He looked at her for a long time. His lower lip trembled, just as it had when he was small. “Mum,” he whispered. “You came in through the exit. That’s twelve quid.”

At seven past six, a rabbit let himself into Mabel’s kitchen. “We put you down for something small.” The list rolled past her slippers and down the cellar steps.

“You did the village supper so beautifully last year,” he said. Mabel remembered. She’d missed her own birthday peeling four hundred fucking carrots.

The wren rang the brass bell beside her toast. “Could you do that lovely thing you do with the napkins?”

Mabel did a lovely thing with one napkin. The wren put the bell away.

“Then what am I supposed to tell forty hungry parishioners?” the rabbit asked.

Mabel buttered her toast. “Tell them you put yourself down for something small.”

For the first time in nineteen years, the village supper had a new chef. At six that evening, forty woodland animals sat down to a carrot each.

Edgar delivered the post, baked the bread, mended the clocks, fixed the pipes, balanced the books and wrote the village paper. On Thursday he interviewed himself about the labour shortage.

“Nobody wants to work anymore,” he dictated. His left eyelid tapped out a second opinion.

The mayor brought him a medal for going above and beyond. It was a lovely medal. Edgar knew because he had engraved the bastard on his lunch break.

“We’re giving you Friday off,” the mayor told him. “Find someone to cover.”

On Friday the whole village slept till noon. The clocks had stopped, nobody had delivered the paper, and the mayor was standing ankle-deep in something warm.

Edgar listened to the phone ring. It made a rather sweet sound once he realised it was happening to somebody else.

On Monday he kept the bakery. At the new price of a croissant, the other five jobs were somebody else’s fucking problem.