The Man Who Buys Stamps

Between two and five in the morning, the all-night pharmacy on Carver Street becomes a small, bright island in a very dark sea, and Theo is its only lighthouse keeper.

He knows the regulars by their purchases. The nurse from St Anne’s who buys a single chocolate bar at 2:40 every night and eats it standing at the counter. The student who buys throat lozenges and energy drinks in quantities that worry him. The old man in the tweed cap who comes in at four precisely and asks, every time, whether they sell stamps.

They do not sell stamps. Theo has told him so perhaps two hundred times. The old man always nods, says thank you, and buys a packet of mints instead, which he pays for with exact change counted out of a leather purse.

Tonight he is late. The clock over the door says 4:12, and then 4:20, and Theo realises he has been watching the door the way you watch a pan that has not yet boiled.

At 4:31 the bell over the door rings. It is not the old man. It is a woman in a camel coat, with the same long face and the same careful way of standing.

“My father,” she says. “He used to come here. He asked me to bring you something.”

She puts a small envelope on the counter. Inside, stacked neatly, are two hundred stamps.