'I'll pop it round later,' she said to her husband, Brian. 'It's only a few doors down.'
Brian grunted something as he finished his coffee, then he gave her a quick peck on the cheek and left for work, mumbling about her having a nice day.
But now she had the perfect excuse to talk to one of them.
When Carrie took the letter round to number twenty-five, she discovered that Mrs Cavanagh was a young and very pretty woman who threw open the door to her and screamed, 'An adult! Come in and talk to me! I haven't had an intelligent conversation for days!'
Smiling, Carrie went inside the chaotic house, which seemed overrun with children.
'I'm a child-minder,' Mrs Cavanagh said, making two cups of tea. 'My car's in for repair and I can't get out, not with this lot. Now,' she said, sitting beside Carrie at the kitchen table, 'Tell me all about the outside world ... '
Carrie didn't get home again until the middle of the afternoon. She and Mrs Cavanagh - Karen - had chatted for hours and had got on so well that they'd arranged to go shopping together on Thursday.
The following morning, Carrie discovered another wrongly-delivered letter on her doormat. She actually felt quite excited about it. It was for a Mrs Deidre Maldock at number fifty-two. Carrie took it round straight after Brian had left for work.
'Oh, my dear, it's so nice of you to bother,' cried Mrs Maldock, a frail, grey-haired lady. 'Do come in and have a cup of tea.'
Over slices of home-made cake, Mrs Maldock - 'Please, call me Deidre.' - spoke about the war, about rations and, 'Isn't the butcher charging a lot for a pound of mince these days?' She said she didn't have many visitors; her husband had died a few years ago, and her son lived too far away to see her more than once a month. She had come to live on the estate because her previous house had been too big - 'I rattled around in it like a lost marble,' she chuckled - but admitted that she often felt lonely. Carrie promised to pop round more often.
When Carrie got back to her house quite late that morning, she found a middle-aged woman waiting on her doorstep. The woman held a letter in her hand.
'It's for you,' she said. 'I think the postman's blind, or senile. There's misplaced mail all over the estate.'
Carrie invited her inside for a cup of tea, and the woman looked nervous for a moment, then she stepped over the threshold as if she'd never been inside anyone's house before.
'It's nice,' she said, gazing around the kitchen.
'I'd like it re-decorated,' Carried said with a heavy sigh. 'I hate this wallpaper, but my husband never seems to have the time. We'll probably still have the same wallpaper up in ten years time.'
The two women laughed together, and suddenly it seemed as if they'd known each other for a very long time.
'My husband's a decorator,' the woman said.
'Really?'
Over coffee, Celia suggested they go shopping for wallpaper on Friday afternoon so that her husband could start decorating at the weekend.
'It'll be fun,' Celia said. 'I used to have a part-time job but, when we moved here, I had to give it up. It's very boring being stuck in the house all day.'
Carrie feverishly nodded in agreement.
The next morning, Carrie received a letter for Mrs Steventon at number nineteen. As she was walking down the road to deliver it, an elderly man limped down his garden path waving a letter at her.
'Your name Carrie Slater?' he gasped, leaning heavily on the garden gate.
Carrie stopped to keep the old man company while he regained his breath. 'Shrapnel,' he said, slapping his leg, 'Got it in the war.'
'Do you know Mrs Maldock at number fifty-two?' Carrie suddenly felt compelled to ask.
The old man shook his head and said he didn't know anybody on the estate yet. Carrie invited him round to her house for a coffee the following morning. She thought she'd invite Mrs Maldock along, too. They were bound to have a lot in common.
Mrs Steventon was a very flustered red-faced woman in her thirties. When she opened the front door, the first thing Carrie noticed was two little boys fighting in the hallway.
'I'm supposed to be at work in half an hour,' Mrs Steventon shrieked, 'And my regular baby-sitter has just telephone me to say she's ill.'
Carrie mentioned Karen, the child-minder. Mrs Steventon gave a huge sigh of relief and, thanking Carrie profusely, dragged the boys across the road to Karen's house.
Later that evening, Mrs Steventon knocked on Carrie's door and handed her a box of chocolates.
'You saved my life,' she said. 'We're terribly short-staffed at the shop at the moment and I couldn't take any time off, but Karen was brilliant. The boys love her.'
'Short-staffed?' Carrie asked.
After chatting for a while longer over a pot of tea in the kitchen, Mrs Steventon - Sally - said Carrie and Celia would be perfect for the vacancies they had at the shop and promised to arrange interviews for them both. She also invited them all over for drinks on Friday night.
'It's about time us neighbours got together,' she said.
The next day, Carrie found herself rushing to the front door when the postman dropped the post through the letterbox, wondering who she would get to meet today. She was disappointed to discover that all the letters on her doormat had the correct name and address on them. No-one came round with letters for her, either.
When the same thing happened again the following morning, Carrie chased the postman down the garden path.
'What's been going on?' she asked the kindly face. 'Everyone on the estate has been getting the wrong letters delivered to their houses.'
'Oh, that,' the postman said, grinning broadly. 'I do apologise. You see, I'm retiring this week and I've had a lot on my mind. In fact,' the postman added, his grin growing even bigger, 'Today is my very last day.'
'Oh.' Carrie suddenly felt very sad. 'We'll miss you.'
The postman nodded and walked on, still grinning as wide as a Cheshire cat, just as Karen pulled up in her newly repaired car to take Carrie and Celia shopping.
'So, how did it go?'
Bill fell into a soft armchair by the fireplace, and let out a long sigh. 'It went well,' he said. 'The blokes in the sorting office gave me a big send-off, and I got a watch from the company.'
He pulled it out of his jacket pocket to show her. His wife, Janet, looked at it and smiled.
'What about the other thing?' she asked, sitting on the arm of his chair and reaching down to take hold of his hand. 'How did that go?'
'As smooth as clockwork.'
'Good, I'm glad. I know how important it was to you.'
'Yes,' Bill said, sighing with satisfaction, 'They'll be alright now.'
Janet squeezed his hand and kissed the top of his head. 'You're the kindest man I've ever known,' she said.
Bill laughed. 'I just wanted to make sure they were okay before I retired. It always takes time for new neighbours to get to know each other, but a bit of misplaced mail always hurries things along a bit.
There'll be nobody lonely on that estate any more.'
