Free The Clothes They Stood Up In by Alan Bennett

very
caring
burglary.”
    Mandy was right, though it was the caringness that was the problem. Had this been a burglary in the ordinary way it would have been easier to get over. Even the comprehensive removal of everything they had in the world was something Mrs. Ransome could have adjusted to, been “positive” about, even enjoyed. But it was the wholesale disappearance coupled with the meticulous reconstruction and return that rankled. Who would want to rob them to that degree and having robbed them would choose to make such immaculate reparations? It seemed to Mrs. Ransome that she had been robbed twice over, by the loss, first, of her possessions, then of the chance to transcend that loss. It was not fair, nor did it make sense; she thought perhaps this was what they meant when they talked about “losing the plot.”
    People seldom wrote to the Ransomes. They had the occasional card from Canada where Mr. Ransome had some relatives of his mother who dutifully kept up the connection; Mrs. Ransome would write back, her card as flavorless as theirs, the message from Canada little more than “Hello. We are still here,” and her reply, “Yes, and so are we.” Generally, though, the post consisted of bills and business communications, and picking them up from the box downstairs in the lobby Mrs. Ransome scarcely bothered to look them through, putting them unsifted on the hall table where Mr. Ransome would deal with them before he had his supper. On this particular morning she’d just completed this ritual when she noticed that the letter on top was from South America, and that it was not addressed to Mr. M. Ransome but to a Mr. M. Hanson. This had happened once before, Mr. Ransome putting the misdirected letter in the caretaker’s box with a note asking him or the postman to be more careful in future.
    Less tolerant of her husband’s fussing than she once had been, Mrs. Ransome didn’t want this performance again so she put the letter on one side so that after her lunch she could go up to the eighth floor, find Mr. Hanson’s door and slip it underneath. At least it would be an outing.
    It was several years since she had been up to the top of the Mansions. There had been some alterations, she knew, as Mr. Ransome had had to write a letter of complaint to the landlords about the noise of the workmen and the dirt in the lift; but, as tenants came and went, someone was always having something done somewhere and Mrs. Ransome came to take renovation as a fact of life. Still, venturing out of the lift she was surprised how airy it all was now; it might have been a modern building, so light and unshadowed and spacious was the landing. Unlike their dark and battered mahogany, this wood-work had been stripped and bleached, and whereas their hallway was covered in stained and pockmarked orange floor covering, this had a thick smoky-blue fitted carpet that lapped the walls and muffled every sound. Above was a high octagonal skylight and beneath it an octagonal sofa to match. It looked less like the hallway of a block of mansion flats than a hotel or one of the new hospitals. Nor was it simply the decoration that had changed. Mrs. Ransome remembered there being several flats but now there seemed to be only one, no trace of the other doors remaining. She looked for a name on this one door just to be sure but there was no name and no letter box. She bent down intending to slip the letter from South America underneath but the carpet was so thick that this was difficult and it wouldn’t go. Above Mrs. Ransome’s head and unseen by her, a security camera, which she had taken for a light fitting, moved around like some clumsy reptile in a series of silent jerks until it had her in frame. She was trying to press the pile of the carpet down when there was a faint buzz and the door swung silently open.
    â€œCome in,” said a disembodied voice and holding up the letter as if it were an