Domestic Mystery Thriller

We were awoken at 03.20 on Monday by a loud noise. It wasn't an attempted break-in or an explosion: it was the sound of a cupboard door falling six feet to the kitchen floor. There had been no earthquake, it just fell off its fixings. As I picked it up to lean it against the wall I saw something else which had fallen to the floor, but noiselessly. It was a letter A, one centimetre high and made of rubber.  I put it on the counter in case it too might need re-fixing - although I couldn't think to what. Later that morning I asked my partner if she had lost a letter A. She looked at me sympathetically.

I had arranged to meet a friend for lunch so I left the cupboard door for later. As for the letter A, I consigned it to the same 'mysterious incident' category as the two coasters which had lately disappeared from their usual place on the sideboard. Arriving early at the restaurant I saw that most of the tables were laid out for big office parties and, knowing this would ruin any hope of an intimate lunch, I phoned my friend to divert him to a different part of town. (By now I was already planning to publish a map on Facebook for those who prefer to walk through town avoiding the hundreds of wooden Christmas Market cabins that have blocked all the pedestrian thoroughfares.)

We decided on a restaurant that had opened only the day before so they had no Christmas party bookings to disturb our tête-a-tête. On the other hand, being anxious to impress, they overdid the service with too-frequent intrusions. Still we managed - without trying - to lunch until late afternoon and in doing so took ownership of the day. I had time only for a brief nap before my next engagement, a Modernist Society illustrated talk on the saving of Preston Bus Station.

The tragedy of Preston's Bus Station is that it is a magnificent building in the wrong place. The Town Planning Dept. says it would make sense to demolish it; but who will trust their judgement when they put it there in the first place? It has just been reprieved by a Grade II Historical Buildings listing but this is not a guarantee that it will survive intact - or even at all. Most of the building is, in fact, a multi-story car-park and it would be a very useful facility to have at an airport - if only they could move it.

Two days later I found another letter A when I was installing a new printer in the study. (There isn't much wrong with the old one, it just needs the insides cleaning, but the time and trouble of dismantling it make no sense given the affordability of a replacement; although the new model requires different cartridges, so the stock in the cupboard is now redundant). I put the second letter A alongside the first one and looked around the room for objects that might have letters missing from them. I could see none.

That evening I attended a big band concert at the invitation of my friend who plays in the trombone section. The repertoire was not entirely to my taste, but the experience of seeing and hearing 35 musicians collaborating expertly is exhilarating whatever the programme. It was late when I got home, still humming White Christmas, but I kept an eye open for stray typographical characters as I prepared for bed. It was then I picked up my new slippers and saw that the soles had the maker's name stuck on in one-centimetre high rubber letters. The A's were missing.