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26/6/04. CROWTHER 102 HOLLY MANSIONS E17. SUMMERS 43 MANOR CRESCENT E10. BERNSTEIN 97 BOUNDARY PLACE E10...'
    Eighteen names and addresses. Eighteen! There had never been more than two on a File LB 0806 instruction before.
    File LB 0806 matters were always handled by Miss Smith, in liaison with the Borough Treasurer himself and with no one else. She had never been told the purpose of the drill; merely given it on a sheet which was to be kept locked in her desk and reminded her of her responsibilities under the Official Secrets Act which she had been required to sign.
    But Miss Smith was not a fool.
    The drill itself was uncomplicated (at least when there was only one name at a time) but it was a nuisance. First, inform the accounts department that until further notice rates demands were to be sent not to the ratepayer concerned but to Miss Smith's desk. Next, contact certain named officials at the local London Electricity Board, North Thames Gas, Thames Water Authority and East Telephone Area with the same instruction. Finally (and the cloak-and-dagger solemnity of this amused Miss Smith), go to the address concerned, where a note would be -always was - pinned to the front door, telling the milkman, newsagent and anyone else concerned not to make any more deliveries till further notice. This note would always name the dairy, the newsagent and so on, and since they were all on the same sheet, none of them would have removed it. Miss Smith, however, had to remove it and then go to each of the addresses and say that as a friend of Mr So-and-so she'd been asked to settle the outstanding account. She was going to look a right Charley, this time, she thought, turning up at (for instance) one of the three major dairies in the borough and claiming to be the personal friend of half a dozen customers who'd all gone on holiday without warning on the same day.
    All the accounts and the retailers' receipts, Miss Smith would then address (personally sealing the envelope) to the Home Office, Department LB7. Payment always arrived by return of post and Miss Smith's final duty would be to reimburse the London Electricity Board and the others.
    Miss Smith, as has been remarked, was not a fool. Nine ratepayers of the borough had so far disappeared into File LB 0806, over the past year, and so far none of them had returned home. But these homes, she had soon become aware, were also on a Metropolitan Police list for periodic checking to make sure no harm came to them, and the police had their own keys. She guessed that the Post Office had their instructions, too.
    It was all so neat, so quiet. All the same, there had been whispers; and Miss Smith, who kept her ear to the ground, knew of worried relatives who had been visited by anonymous soothing officials, and who now wore a 'We could an if we would' air. It had also not escaped her attention that the names accumulating in File LB 0806 included a high proportion of technicians, as well as one nurse and one pest control officer.
    And now eighteen of them in one day - immediately after a nation-wide chain of local disasters which some said were a portent of worse to come. Eighteen people, with their immediate families if any, from a single London borough.
    Miss Smith had a strong instinct of survival and she had been thinking ahead for some time. She had converted all her savings into small valuables and rarities which she estimated had a good chance of retaining at-least a barter price in any circumstances. She also kept £800 in notes stitched into the lining of an anorak. It was a pity about her pension, but ...
    She finished her day's work meticulously, and a busy day it was; none of the eighteen names was missed, though it cost the Council a lot in taxi fares, for which (and for the milk and newsagents' payments) she took care to reimburse herself from Petty Cash immediately. She said good night to her colleagues in exactly her usual manner.
    Then she caught a bus home, to her terraced house