However hard he had tried to put the past behind him, it had stayed with him. Sometimes it was a light zephyr wind on his face; sometimes it was a gale beating against his back. For four years, it had always been there. He had never been able, and God he'd tried, to escape the past.

Through those years, Frank Perry had been waiting for them. He couldn't have put features to their faces, but he'd known they'd come in suits, with polished shoes, with a briefcase that wouldn't be opened, with knowledge that would be only partially shared. They'd be so recognizable and predictable. From the moment he'd seen them run from the car to his front door he'd known who they were and what they would tell him. He had rehearsed, more times than he could count, what he would say to them, and had finally said it.

He stopped pacing. He stared out of the window across the green. His fists were clenched. Everything he could see, the homes of his friends, the shop, the hall and the pub at the end of the road, were as normal and unremarkable as they had been before the men from London had come. It was hard for Frank Perry to believe that anything had changed, but it had and he knew it.

His fingernails pressed hard into the palms of his hands. He would fight to hold everything that was precious to him.

Meryl Perry held the umbrella over the child's head and sheltered him all the way from the car, through the gate, up the path to the front door. The child shivered as they waited for the door to be opened. The Carstairs lived in a fine house on the main street, the only road through the village. They both worked and had good positions; she would only just have reached home, and he wouldn't be back for an hour. The child bolted through the open door.

"You're a saint, Meryl. Thanks ever so."

"Don't worry about it, Emma, wouldn't let him get soaked."

"You wouldn't, others might. Look, you're drenched. You're a sweetheart."