‘A big fuss.’

‘As long as you promise no heroics.’

‘No. I’ll leave that to the police. I can’t understand what the developer thinks he can do, anyway. He can hardly bulldoze the houses before I’ve appealed any demolition orders.’

‘It is a bit puzzling.’

Angus nodded agreement.

‘Well, if any would-be intruders see lights on in the first three houses, that should deter them from breaking in,’ Nell added.

‘Yes, but I still feel … uneasy.’

‘So do I. I can’t put my finger on it, but that Dorling creep isn’t likely to play by the rules, so what else has he got up his sleeve?’

‘Even if he had all the houses knocked down, he could hardly force me to sell these houses to him, or the land.’

She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. They’d both heard tales about Dorling getting his way before through dirty tricks. Maybe he was underestimating Angus’s stubbornness about not selling. Or maybe he was prepared to take some big risks.

She didn’t undress and lay down on the sofa, dozing only fitfully, her phone on the floor next to her, ready.

Angus decided not to leave a light on in Number 2. If intruders came, he wanted to surprise them.

He didn’t sleep at all but as the night passed, no figures came creeping through the darkness and the alarm didn’t sound, so he might as well have.

Chapter Thirty-One

It was a busy night in the small emergency medical centre in Sexton Bassett. The nurse practitioner doing triage listened to Stacy’s tale and said she’d have to wait to see the doctor, since her problem clearly wasn’t urgent. ‘We only deal with the minor cases here and there’s been a lot of fighting in town tonight. There’s a group of hoods causing mayhem, and some of them have been using knives on one another. Time the police dealt with them properly.’

As they sat on the hard wooden benches as far away as possible from the irritating programmes on a tinny-sounding television high up on the wall and also at the opposite side from the noisy youths, they watched the hands of a big, old-fashioned clock tick slowly round. They chatted now and then but mostly were silent, both of them tired.

After a while Stacy grew restless. ‘This is a complete waste of your time, Adam. Why don’t you go home? I’ll be perfectly safe here because there are plenty of police around, and I can get a taxi back after the doctor’s finished with me.’

‘Definitely not. I intend to see you right into your house afterwards. Anyway, the crowd of battle-scarred youths seems to be thinning, so you should get in to see a doctor soon. Surely there won’t be any more accidents or fights in the town at this time of night?’

However, thanks to a car accident, it was almost dawn before Stacy managed to see a tired-looking doctor. He listened gravely to her tale, checked her out and swabbed her neck again with disinfectant, as the nurse had done.