‘No,’ he lied. ‘Are you coming?’ he added, passing the pub and spotting the pathway on the far side of the road that led to the visitor’s information centre and the old railway station beyond. Further down the street the spire of the church rose out of the earth like a dagger.

‘Yeah. We’re just having a toilet stop.’

‘Pete with you?’

‘Yeah. He’s dealing with the girls. We’re driving straight home afterwards. I don’t want to talk to anyone, apart from you.’

‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Alan showed himself anywhere?’

‘Nope,’ James said. ‘Probably won’t come...’

‘Well, we’ll see you at the church,’ she said. ‘We’ve still got the old green car.’

‘Nice.’

‘Yeah, costs us a bomb all the bloody time,’ Yvonne said. ‘They’re coming. I should get going. See you in about forty minutes.’

‘Rightyo,’ James said. ‘Hey, I know you’ve moved away, but you might know...’

‘Know what?’

‘Do you remember the Joneses?’

‘Yeah, they’ve got that place just past the abattoir on the way out of town. Three generations on the one farm. The father is the stock and station agent. His wife died a couple of years ago. I think the son is in the business too, or was. Some trouble there. Tony was in the same class as Johnny Jones,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me they’re coming?’

‘I doubt it. What kind of trouble?’

James had reached the car park of the old train station now, the twin bridges showing through the trees beyond it. The small eatery inside the renovated waiting room was open. He needed coffee.

Yvonne sighed. ‘I dunno. It’s not Jones and Son anymore apparently, not since the son got his real estate license suspended. Something about fiddling with livestock numbers, and then his wife left him. Doris tries to tell me all this stuff about the locals, but I don’t really give a fuck.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said.

‘A house full of men... gawd, can you imagine?’ she said.

They laughed, loud and fake, and rung off. James checked his watch. It was ten-thirty. There was still half an hour until he should show up at the church.

James ordered coffee and a toasted sandwich from the teenager staffing the tiny canteen. While he waited, he read the billboard with an image of the first Kippen Bridge, a pair of timber structures that went up in 1901, one for rail and one for road traffic. Before that there’d been a ferry, which is why the weir had been constructed. The latest vehicle bridge was the same age as the toilet block, which featured in a forty-year-old, black-and-white photograph of the town’s aldermen at the big opening. Someone had decided to take the snap at the parklands, no doubt because it afforded the best view of the concrete span.