Morning Rounds, by Kieran Holloway

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Mrs Pereira unlocked the shutters of the newsagent’s on Station Parade at half past five every morning, and by the time I arrived in the winter of 1988 she had already marked up thirty-one rounds in green felt pen. She had come from Goa as a girl and had run the shop with her husband until he died; now she ran it alone and, people said, better. She knew every customer’s paper without looking, and which houses had dogs that bit. Each paper boy had a canvas bag with his name stitched on the strap, and if a bag came back with a paper still in it she would want to know exactly which door had been missed and why. She paid us on Saturdays from a cash box, in coins, counting them into our palms one at a time. In January, when the snow came, she drove the heaviest round herself in her little red Mini, with the papers stacked on the passenger seat, and told us to go home and get warm. Nobody ever argued with her twice.

List five things you learn about Mrs Pereira in this extract.