A-Z challenge: obsession.

                    MARGARET sorting a mail sack at table

MARGARET: More food for thought. They can't get enough of other people's words.

                    Opens letter

MARGARET (reading): Dear Mr Irving. I represent a famous carnival owner and we are enquiring as to the availability of your mongoose. I am authorised to dispense the sum of fifty thousand US dollars. Please reply at earliest convenience, yours blah blah blah.

Margaret places to one side. Opens another.

MARGARET (reading): Dear Mr Mongoose.
                    Pause
I am eight years old and I am a big fan of yours. What is your favourite food? Do you like it on the Isle of Man? I live in Brighton so if you ever want a holiday, Brighton is very pretty.

                    She puts the letter to one side. She picks up a pile of opened mail, scans them and sorts them as she speaks.

MARGARET: Child. Promoter. Conman. Child. Child. Child. Ooh, scientist. Child. Child. Promoter. Reporter. Reporter. Reporter. Death threat. Child. Pitier. Child. Sceptic. Child. Reporter.

She bundles all the letters bar the scientist and the skeptic and places them in a basket.

MARGARET: Sometimes people send the odd banknote, but mainly it's chldren wanting to join the club and adults wanting to damn us to hell for witchcraft. Jim likes these letters and so do I. I find they get a good fire started. He keeps them.

                    Skittering overhead

MARGARET: Ah, Gef, if only you could read. Or be useful. Or be gone.

***

 Well, Margaret isn't an obsessive sort. The Irvings could probably have made a small wage selling memberships to the Gef the mongoose club.

Jim is the obsessed one in the story, Voirrey is the opposite of obsessed. As the years pass, she spends more and more time further and further away from the house.

Tomorrow: P