Nina watched him go affectionately, and Lissa had the strange sense, as she had had recently, of watching other people’s happy lives as if from behind glass, as if she were watching them on television, taking part in a life that wasn’t hers, wasn’t a place she could legitimately be in. Why did everyone else seem so sorted and organized? (It would have surprised Nina very much to know that anyone thought this about her; as far as she was concerned they lived on a shoestring, couldn’t ever go away because of the farm, and dealt with a myriad of daily ups and downs, just like everyone else in the world. Plus, she was miles from her family. Although when she got home in the evenings to the farmhouse and the log burner was blazing and John was kicking his little feet in delight on the lamb’s-wool rug, smelling of baby oil after his bath, grinning and gurgling up at his besotted father—well, nothing else seemed to matter quite so much.)

Would she? Lissa was thinking. Would she ever have something so pleasant and so simple? She sighed. Everything like that, all the trappings of a grown-up life—and they had to be nearly the same age—felt so very far away from where she was.

“You seem pretty settled,” she said shyly to Nina, who looked surprised for an instant, then smiled.

“Well . . . it’s a pretty nice place to be,” she said, and at that moment Lissa could only agree with her.

The next second, there was a terrible screeching of brakes and a yowling sound. Both the women jumped up, and Lissa dashed out of the bus.

There on the square was an old battered car and, knocked clean to the side of it, a fat, scruffy-looking orange-and-brown tabby cat.

Carrie, following, gasped aloud. “Marmalade!” she screamed.

“Stay here,” said Nina fiercely, holding the old woman back. “Can you go?” she said to Lissa. Lissa had absolutely no idea what she could conceivably do with a dead cat, but she tentatively wandered over.

An incredibly old woman, who couldn’t possibly have seen over the steering wheel, got out of the ancient white car.

“Noooo,” she said. “Och, oh nooooo, is that Carrie’s cat?”

“Margaret McLafferty, is that you?” came a loud cracked voice from the bus. Nina obviously wasn’t having a great deal of luck holding back Carrie. “Did you just kill my cat?”

“Och, noooooo,” said the woman, leaning faintly on the car door. Lissa went up to her.

“Are you all right?” she said. “Do you need to sit down?”

“Dinnae worry about her!” came Carrie’s strident voice. “Save my cat!”

“I’m not . . .”