Zachary Jones, disabled building worker, fifty-three years old, short of a leg, amputated below the knee from a construction-site fall, sat at the window of his cottage. He saw everything that moved in the collection of homes at the end of the lane that was too small to be called a village. With his binoculars he noted every coming and going, every visitor,. every stranger. The binoculars' magnification flitted from the face of the white one to the face of the black one, and he thought they were arguing and thought they disputed their directions, and then down to the tail-end registration plate.

Zachary Jones had worked the building game in London, knew diplomatic plates, before coming home as an amputee to live with his spinster sister. He wondered what brought Americans from their embassy down to this God-forgotten corner of nowhere.

Mrs Daphne Farson saw them from behind her lace curtains, then lost them when her view was obscured by the sign in her front garden that advertised bed-and-breakfast accommodation. She knew Americans.

The retired clergyman, the occasional gardener, the crab fisherman, the retired librarian, the District Nurse, everyone who lived in that community at the end of the lane beside the sea shore saw the big Cherokee Jeep edge down over the last of the tarmacadam, pause in the car park for summer visitors, reverse, turn, come back up the lane and stop just short of David and Flora Parsons' bungalow. All of them heard the engine stilled, saw the lights doused.

All eyes on the Cherokee Jeep and all eyes on the front door of David and Flora Parsons' bungalow. The waiting time… A small collective shiver of excitement held the community.

'You sure it's right?'

'It's what I was told, a white singled storey in a crap place,' Axel said.

'We got here, so when you going to shift yourself?'

'She's not here.'

'You know that? How do you know that?'