STREET TRADER All right, my love? You’re looking especially lovely today, sweetheart. MISS SHEPHERD Don’t sweetheart me. I’m a sick woman. Dying possibly. STREET TRADER Well, chin up, love, we all got to go some time. Smells like you already have. ALAN BENNETT (voice-over) I do not believe in the snake, still less that it was en route for the van. Cut to: EXT. 42 GLOUCESTER CRESCENT. DAY The PERRY CHILDREN playing in their garden. Piercing scream. Fiona comes up. CHILD (SAM) Mummy! Mummy! There’s a snake!
ALAN BENNETT (voice-over) Only next day I fi nd there has been a break-in at the local pet shop, so there may have been a snake on the run …
A boa constrictor slithers through the fl ower bed. So of course I feel guilty.
The CHILDREN and FIONA run into the house shouting ‘A snake! A snake!’
