↓ Evelyn’s Response

I’ve received quite a few letters this week, and Margery’s arrived in an envelope that smelled faintly of tinned peaches, which I took as a sign to address it first.

Margery, I want to reassure you immediately: nothing about your situation is cause for alarm. What you’re describing is, in my experience, entirely consistent with a Domestic Orderer — a low-level presence, generally harmless, that becomes attached to a specific category of household objects and cannot help itself. The Tuesday consistency is the real tell. They are, if nothing else, creatures of rigid routine. The fact that it ignores your jars is not arbitrary; in my experience cataloguing these interactions over many years, Domestic Orderers have a strong and frankly quite principled aversion to anything with a paper label that might peel. Tins are their preferred medium. Derek’s continued unconsciousness through all of this is also completely typical — they produce a very localised, very targeted calm around sleeping household members, which is considerate of them, even if unhelpful to you.