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When I ask why, she bats the question away with her hand and will not say. Why is she not interested in their past when she’s fascinated by everyone else’s?
    I have not told Foxy about the envelope. I don’t know why, it’s just … I needed to dwell on it alone, let the idea settle. I am afraid of her eagerness, what she will do. I was afraid to let her loose on my dad. Not only because she would have doubtless given the game away, somehow, about the nature of our relationship, but because she would have tried to turn him inside out, upside-down, shake all the memories from the pockets of his mind and … And I feared what would happen to him, then. What would be left.
    Foxy has such tenacity, such fierceness – she is more of a hound than a fox when on the scent of the past. I cannot imagine her in the same room as my father. Her energy would suck his out. They are like different species.
    Now I exaggerate! The night is getting into my head. How I hate the night. I would like to live in the land of the midnight sun, but all year round, to have no division between night and day, no boundary, never a time when you look out of a window into the dark to see that every door is shut, every pair of curtains drawn, every light extinguished.
    â€˜You could train to be a nurse,’ Foxy suggested once, ‘and work nights.’
    It made sense, but I could never be a nurse. I’m squeamish and I don’t like touching people, except people I choose to touch. And working nights, whatever the job was, would rob me of Foxy for whom night-time is luxury. She is the deepest sleeper I have ever known and the quickest to switch. She is rarely sleepy, either awake or asleep as if there is a very efficient valve in her, no leakage either way.
    The envelope. A fortnight ago my mother rang me. ‘I’ve had a letter,’ she said.
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Well, since you seem so determined to waken the dogs …’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜The sleeping dogs. All this pestering about your father’s war …’ I gasped at the unfairness of this, I had only asked her once or twice. ‘I’ve had this letter. I don’t know what to do with it. Should I send it to you?’
    â€˜What is it?’
    â€˜It’s from a Mrs Priest writing to tell me of her husband’s – who incidentally I don’t know from Adam – death. The Reverend Priest would you believe! He knew your father in the war.’
    â€˜A letter about Daddy?’
    â€˜She’s been through his papers and found some things. To do with, you know, the Japs and so on …’
    â€˜Shouldn’t you give them to Daddy?’
    â€˜I don’t want him all stirred up unnecessarily. Night after night of it I’m getting at the moment. He’s worse. I don’t want him more upset. And I don’t want to open it. Shall I send it to you? You see what you think.’
    â€˜Yes do,’ I said. I was touched that she had chosen me, not Hazel, touched that she had taken me seriously when I’d asked about Daddy. I’d thought she only considered it silly, and me a childish nuisance.
    A bulky envelope arrived two days later. I picked it up from the mat before Foxy could see. She is insatiably curious about mail and phone calls. Nosy bag, I call her. It’s not that she’s suspicious or jealous, she’s just plain nosy.
    Inside the envelope, there was a note written on blue paper and addressed to my mother, this was folded round a fat manila envelope stuck down with parcel tape. I read the note:
    Dear Mrs Dawkins ,
    My husband, the Rev. Priest, passed away three months ago. While going through his papers recently I came across the enclosed envelope, which, as you see, has your husband’s name on it. I apologise for the delay in forwarding it to you. I have decided to send it to you rather than to Mr Dawkins directly as I know how sensitive some veterans are to