If it's the day of the letters we're talking about, Miss Felicia Brinsmead was in top form.

And to think they once had a Chinese joss-house right on this plot my child, she said, standing in her shop expecting customers.

Only for a year or two, the shop objected.

My goodness you are a grumpy wreck of a thing, she laughed. Considering you're younger than I am.

Miserable, miserable, whispered the shop.

I've no patience with property anyway, she sniffed and gave her attention to the first of the letters which she held open in her hand, not yet sent. So she read it back to its author, her brother, that venerable man forever standing idle, his days spent observing the exchange of money and goods. His copperplate handwriting invested this letter with the authority of a legal document.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your correspondence. We would wish you to convey back to the Australian Aesthetic and Historical Resources Commission the following information.

We residents of Whitey's Fall are aware that, as you point out, our 'historic township is falling into disrepair and ruin'. The fact is that we ourselves grow old. We do not wish you to spend a single dollar of your money on restoration here. The buildings have been used. They have done well enough for us. But we shall soon be dead; so let the place also fall into ruin.

We prefer not to enter into debate on the subject of our own lives; rather, we would ask you to extend us the courtesy of considering the matter closed.

Faithfully Yours, &c., on behalf of the residents of Whitey's Fall, I am, S. Brinsmead, Esq.

Miss Brinsmead folded it along the creases, tweaked it with fingers already pink from handling things, and popped it in the envelope.

– You surpass yourself Sebastian, she declared. Wait till they get this. I entirely approve. Put so succinctly, there can be no excuse for misunderstanding us now.

He smiled but did not step forward to retrieve the letter. Smiled at it from a dream of Corfu, across sacks of potatoes and an insurrection of groceries, through waves of earthy scents he smiled, too pleased with her response to look her in the eye. The shop muttered, disgruntled, the cracks in its timber walls opening wider so that more convolvulus vines burst in from outside and cast garlands of vulgar flowers among the bins of sugar where they trembled, listening, purple with concentration.

– I shall post your letter when I take my outing, Miss Brinsmead promised.

Miserable, miserable, whispered the shop.

Next moment, the second letter arrived. It happened this way: The door opened and an unknown young woman stepped in. She hesitated, lost, while her eyes grew accustomed to the dim interior. Objects of glass and tin glinted messages, biscuit packets blinked exhausted cellophane eyes, spirit kettles sat with their spouts raised and trouser-presses lounged against the wall as if who cared? The young woman stood where she was at the entrance. For a moment, only the three human beings were inanimate. Who are you? grunted the hanging flitch of bacon so that its flies were disturbed and buzzed around irritably. A chorus of sou'wester-clad seamen sang from sardine tins their surprised North Sea chanties, powdered bananas from the Abdul Gonzalez Company of Manila leaked colonies of pollen, frozen chickens held their breath (lampooned by a shelf of corsets), rubber gloves gently and hopelessly cradled one another's sorrows. Glass cases showed the stranger herself as a ghost. All the tons of goods long since sold and eaten mourned from the shelves requiem aeternam.

While ladies' frocks clustered on their rack to gossip about her, the visitor stared amazed at the comprehensive range of items on sale. This was the only shop in a remote settlement; something foreign to her. Stacked round the counter stood twelve towers of newspapers, the bottom ones mouldy and kicked ragged, the top ones for sale but never sold; the dispensable murders of the past beneath the dispensable rapes of the day before yesterday, the fall of Singapore under the rise of valium; and all standardized in broadsheet and tabloid; millions of dollars' worth of truth-gathering squandered in the effort to persuade the citizens of Whitey's Fall that things are so. On one shelf new mousetraps were heaped among used traps with the mice still in them. A cat warming the sugared eucalyptus drops lay waiting to hypnotize a customer. And the whole place reeking of termite industry.

If I had brought you here, I would have taken you into this shop expecting to surprise you.

Miss Brinsmead behind the counter was made up of pillows, so large, so soft and white. But the instant you spoke to her she reacted with energy, her body colliding noiselessly with the fridge and the till; her eyes twinkling, blue irises outlined as crisply as a child's; her aged hands immediately on what she wanted; the oof of satisfaction as she reached up for your request, and her silk dress stretching in diagonal quivers across her back. The thing everybody noticed first was her hair. Like a hideous grey scab, she kept it as a matted lump crammed into a net, hanging down stiff and crackly against her back, an enormous bag which reached almost to her waist.

So, when that unknown woman came into the shop, this was the place as she found it and this was the person who stood ready to serve her.

The customer clasped her hands preparing for the indiscretion of delight. Were the Brinsmeads once again to be discovered, taken up, admired and found quaint? They knew the type. Miss Brinsmead adopted her most uncompromising manner and made ready to deny she stocked any of the young woman's desires.

– Excuse me, the stranger whispered.

Miss Brinsmead said nothing.

– I meant excuse me because I didn't mean to stare. It's all so solid. So ... well ... sensible.

At that one word, Miss Brinsmead fell in love with her.

– You see, the young woman explained. I'd hoped it would be like this. Though it's better, richer. Oh do please excuse me. I'm making myself ridiculous. I have a letter here. I'm looking for a Mr Sebastian Brinsmead. Could you tell me ...

– I'll take it, Miss Brinsmead offered tenderly. I'll take it for him. So she took it, opening it right there and then without explaining who she was or what right she had. She read the letter out loud, embellishing it with comments as she went. Dear Seb, my goodness who's it from? Sebastian, the letter's from Anne McTaggart: Annie Lang! a letter from the dead. How delightful. How interesting. If you have not forgotten an old acquaintance, she says, you will surely do me a favour, one wonders what possessed her to use a word like acquaintance, though.

Emerging from the loom of his musings, concealing reluctance with mildness, the old man detached himself from the wall to witness the letter in person. A full white beard clothed his massive chest with wisdom and softened the buttoned-up...