'OK, Dad.'

'Spot of social intercourse.'

'You'll be lucky.' Fay watched him stride past the window towards the town square. The old devil still looked deceptively fit for someone who, ever so slowly, was going mad.

He would put on a wonderful performance for the prospective purchasers, always assuming they caught him on one of his better days. That Santa Claus beard and the matching twinkle. They'd love him. More importantly, they'd trust him, the poor sods.

But before she could unleash this ample bundle of ecclesiastical charm on the punters, there was just one minor difficulty to overcome.

The Canon didn't appear to want to leave Crybbe. Ever.

This was the central problem in Fay's life. This was what kept her awake at night.

Christ, how could he? He didn't tramp the hills, wasn't much interested in peregrine falcons or otters or bog-orchids. How, for God's sake, could he bear to go on living in this no-hope town now that the woman who'd brought him here had been dead for nearly a year?

Other recent settlers kept saying what a little haven it was. Convincing themselves. A handful of retired people – most of them rather younger than the Canon – drifted into the town every year. The kind who told themselves they needed to be closer to nature. But nature, for them, amounted to a nice view. They came here not to die, but to fade out. To sit amid soft greenery until they grew frail and lighter than air and the wind blew them away like dandelion seeds.

What happened in reality was that an ambulance eventually took them off, rattling along the narrow lanes to Hereford General, twenty-five miles away. Taking too long to get there because all the roads were B roads, clogged with tractors and trailer-loads of sheep, whose milky eyes showed that they had no illusions at all about fading into a green heaven.

'Don't do it, Dad,' Fay said, just to create a new sound – three minutes' walk from the so-called town centre and all you could hear was the clock on the mantelpiece and the wheezing of the fridge. 'Don't leave your mind in bloody Crybbe.'