Diana Hunter paid her taxes down through the years with an almost monotonous regularity. Her official existence, rolling backwards from her unruly retirement to her brief literary stardom to her administrative work for the System’s various not-quite governmental contractors and a first job in the filing section of the agricultural exports division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is paralysingly dull. It all makes perfect sense, up to and including a late-life rebellion in the face of age and the awareness of mortality. She’s ordinary, predictable and solid.