“Very clear,” said the vicar, Father Rodney. “Perhaps you could elucidate, Mrs. Tollervey-Jones?”

“Not in here, I hope,” whispered young farmer John Thornbull to Derek, who managed to turn a guffaw into a sneeze.

“Bless you,” said Floss Cullen, the newest co-opted member of the council.

“Youth,” Mrs. T-J had said, “we need a young person, preferably a woman, to represent young people in the village.” Derek and John had sighed. Their chair, as she liked to be called, was known for getting sudden bees in her bonnet. These would be pursued enthusiastically, and when achieved, she would be on to the next innovation. Old Tony Dibson, the oldest and longest serving councillor muttered on each occasion that he didn’t think there was anything wrong with the council as it was, and if it weren’t broken, why fix it?

Floss had been co-opted, and had indeed brought a breath of fresh air to the council proceedings. She could persuade even diehards like Tony Dibson to her point of view. She worked for Derek’s wife, Lois Meade, who ran New Brooms, a cleaning service based in the village, and with an office in Tresham, the nearest large town. Now married to Ben Cullen, Floss continued her cleaning work because she enjoyed it, though she had done well at school and had been expected by her parents to do something better than scrubbing other people’s floors.

Now the three factions had settled back into their seats, and Father Rodney asked again if he could be told exactly what the proposals were.

Derek looked at his watch. “I can tell you, Vicar,” he said. Mrs. T-J nodded her approval, and he said, “Repair the village hall. Knock it down and build a new one. Adapt the old catgut factory to be the village hall. That’s the three, and I suggest we have a vote right now on which one we’re going for.”

“Just to recap on these,” Mrs. T-J said, taking charge, “the first, to repair the hall, is a straightforward job. Expensive, but straightforward, and well in line with a celebration of one hundred years serving the village. The second would be hugely expensive, and the third is impractical, the catgut factory being outside the village and the other side of the railway line.”