The name seemed to shock James, and for the first time he seemed uneasy.

“She came to the house after the meeting,” Alice continued. “ I found her a very pleasant woman, very committed. We had a long conversation. She was most sympathetic.”

James shrugged. “She’s young,” he said. “No sense of proportion, no objectivity. She belongs to all those conservation groups. I’ve told her before that the Express isn’t just a vehicle for her own propaganda.”

“You don’t understand!” For the first time they realised how upset Alice was. They were afraid she would cry. “ You don’t understand how important this is to me!”

There was a silence.

“Alice,” Judy said at last. “What is this all about?”

The older woman got up suddenly and left the room. When she returned, she was carrying something that a child might have made at school, a collage of newspaper and magazine cuttings on a pink card. She set it on the table and they read the words, made up of letters from different sizes of prints and different sorts of typefaces.

“If you kill this village,” it read, “we’ll kill you.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” James cried. “ Really. It’s just some crank.”

“I don’t take the threat seriously,” Alice said. “Of course I don’t. But I take the sense of outrage seriously. This afternoon at the protest meeting I was accused of hypocrisy, of caring more about money than about the people who live in Brinkbonnie. But it’s not true. This development is part of the greed and materialism that will ruin our countryside if we let it …” She paused dramatically, and Judy was reminded that Alice had made exactly the same speech at the county meeting of the WI with the tune of “Jerusalem” playing behind her. Judy pictured her aunt on the stage, articulate and ferocious, and remembered the cheers and applause that had followed her words.

But today there was no applause and Alice continued more quietly. “I love it here,” she said. “When Anthony and I moved into the Tower, we were strangers, but people made us feel that we belonged. When he was ill, the house was always full of flowers—gifts from our friends. And when he died, there was always someone to talk to. The Tower and my friends in Brinkbonnie mean more to me, perhaps even more than my family. Now I feel I’ve betrayed them and I’m not going to let it happen.” She looked directly at James. “ The Tower will be yours one day,” she told him. “Perhaps you should think that you have some responsibility for Brinkbonnie, too. Otherwise I might have to consider leaving the house to someone who’s prepared to take the responsibility more seriously.”

There was silence. The threat seemed so out of character that they could hardly believe they were understanding her properly. They stared at James.