The High Street was busy in the way that small towns are busy on weekday mornings. There were women with prams and pushchairs and howling children dragged by one hand. They were all laden with shopping and all in a hurry. Even the elderly ladies who pushed trolleys or carried nylon shopping bags and wore gloves walked quickly, with purpose, and the shouted greetings to acquaintances were lost as they moved on up the street. Only the men seemed leisurely, prepared to stand in shop doorways watching the street. Elizabeth looked at her watch, then went into a boutique and began to look at the dresses and skirts on the sale rack. The shop doors were open, and from the other side of the street Molly could see her. The girl did not show any real interest in the clothes. It was as if she were early for a date and was killing time. Molly, looking in a gift-shop window, could see the boutique reflected in the glass. Jostled by busy, hurrying women who had dinners to cook, washing to put out, she felt that her inactivity, her passive watchfulness made her an outsider, not a true representative of her sex. She was relieved when the girl came out of the shop and began to walk briskly. Molly stayed on the opposite side of the street and kept some distance behind her.

Then Elizabeth disappeared, as if by some conjuring trick. One moment she was there. Molly’s vision was blocked by a large woman on the pavement and a delivery van on the road. Then, when she could see the opposite side of the road again, the girl had gone. Feeling a little bewildered Molly crossed the road and the apparent magic was explained. There was a narrow archway between two shops. A flight of steps led through it to a cobbled path. Molly just glimpsed Elizabeth following the path round a sharp left turn. Feeling like an elderly Alice, she followed. It was, in fact, like leaving the real world behind. As she turned too she walked into sunlight and what could have been the set for a film about the middle ages. Ahead of her was the parish church. There was a grass bank, and trees. On the right of the cobbled path was a small courtyard of almshouses, unchanged for three hundred years. The cobbles of the path spread into the courtyard. There was still a pump and trough in the middle of it, and two old ladies dressed in black chatted in the sun. The path led past the church to a terrace of houses, then through a pair of wrought-iron gates to another busy road. But in the churchyard and its surroundings there was no sense of the hurry and noise and female frenzy of the shopping streets. Even the weather was different. Enclosed by the high, soft stone walls, it was sheltered from the sharp sea breeze, and it seemed that the warmth of the summer was trapped there. Elizabeth walked past the church and into one of the terraced houses opposite. She did not knock at the door.