The rain was not kind to Monday morning’s deliveries, but Maisie Hollander had an umbrella, seventy-four items of post, and the blue notebook — and she was, for the first time, ahead of schedule.

Two hours and eighteen minutes. That is how long it took Hollander to complete Round 14 on Monday, down from two hours and thirty-five minutes on her first solo outing on Saturday. She consulted the notebook — the handwritten guide that Albie Finch compiled over thirty-three years and left with Postmaster Gullick to pass on to his successor — perhaps thirty times. On Saturday, the count was forty.

“I’m learning which pages I need and which I don’t,” Hollander said, shaking rain from her cap at the Docklands Post Office counter. “The route is in my legs now. It’s the people I’m still learning.”

The Discovery

On Pilot’s Alley, between numbers 6 and 8, there is a narrow passage that leads to a back staircase serving the upper floors of three adjacent buildings. The staircase has its own letter box — a rusted iron slot that Hollander noticed only because a draught of warm air came through it as she passed.

“It’s not in the notebook,” she said. “I don’t know if Mr Finch used it or if he went round to the front. But there were two letters for 6A this morning, and the front door was bolted.”

She climbed the staircase, delivered the letters, and met a Mrs Hadley, who appeared surprised to see anyone at all. “She said the postman usually puts them through the front when the door’s open and leaves them at number 4 when it’s not,” Hollander said. “I think she was pleased.”

Hollander has begun adding her own notes to the margins of the blue notebook — in pencil, she emphasised, not ink. “It’s his book. I’m just borrowing it.”

The Regulars

The community of Round 14 is adjusting to its new carrier with the cautious hospitality of people who have known only one postman for three decades.

Mrs Carmody, of 11 Chandler’s Row, gave Hollander shortbread again on Monday — the same tin, the same ritual she observed with Finch for as long as anyone can remember. Hollander accepted one piece, as Finch advised, and ate it between Chandler’s Row and Lower Harbourfront Parade.

Mr Pettigrew waved from his second-floor window. Mrs Tolliver, at number 9, opened her door before the knock. “She was expecting me,” Hollander said. “I think she’s been expecting someone since Friday.”

The ginger cat at number 22, which Finch’s notebook identifies only as “the committee” with no further explanation, was absent. Hollander suspects the rain.

Getting Faster

Postmaster Gullick, watching the returns ledger, said Hollander is progressing well. “Finch was doing the round in an hour forty-five by the end,” he said. “But it took him a year to get there. She’s two weeks in and already under two twenty. She’ll be fine.”

Hollander herself is less certain. “The streets I know,” she said. “It’s the rhythm I’m still finding. When to knock and when to leave it. When to stop and when to keep walking. Finch had thirty-three years of rhythm. I’ve had three days.”

She paused, then added: “But I found the staircase. That’s mine now.”