The taxi had vanished. Where it had stood there was only curbing and a few papers blowing lazily up the gutter. Across the street, two kids were clutching at each other and giggling. Doris noticed that one of them had a deformed hand – it looked more like a claw. She’d thought the National Health was supposed to take care of things like that. The children looked across the street, saw her observing them, and fell into each other’s arms, giggling again. ‘I don’t know,’ Doris said. She felt disoriented and a little stupid. The heat, the constant wind that seemed to blow with no gusts or drops, the almost painted quality of the light… ‘What time was it then?’ Farnham asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know,’ Doris Freeman said, startled out of her recital. ‘Six, I suppose. Maybe twenty past.’

‘I see, go on,’ Farnham said, knowing perfectly well that in August sunset would not have begun – even by the loosest standards – until well past seven. ‘Well, what did he do?’ Lonnie asked, still looking around. It was almost as if he expected his irritation to cause the cab to pop back into view. ‘Just pick up and leave?’

‘Maybe when you put your hand up,’ Doris said, raising her own hand and making the thumb-and-forefinger circle Lonnie had made in the call box, ‘maybe when you did that he thought you were waving him on.’

‘I’d have to wave a long time to send him on with two-fifty on the meter,’ Lonnie grunted, and walked over to the curb. On the other side of Crouch Hill Road, the two small children were still giggling. ‘Hey!’ Lonnie called. ‘You kids!’

‘You an American, sir?’ the boy with the claw-hand called back.

‘Yes,’ Lonnie said, smiling. ‘Did you see the cab over here? Did you see where it went?’

The two children seemed to consider the question. The boy’s companion was a girl of about five with untidy brown braids sticking off in opposite directions. She stepped forward to the opposite curb, formed her hands into a megaphone, and still smiling – she screamed it through her megaphoned hands and her smile – she cried at them: ‘Bugger off, Joe!’