Time passes looking out the windows. The sky has darkened and black clouds hang heavy, threatening to burst. Her hand reaches for the cutting in her pocket and holds it there, tightly. In her other pocket is her mobile phone; she’d made sure to call Park House from the bus station before she left the city to check on Nan. It didn’t feel right to call from the road. One of the carers told her she was doing a still-life art class this morning. Chloe had never known Nan to paint.

The driver applies the brakes, and she looks up just in time to see the next village sign flash past on the left. Low Drove. She stands up and a couple of the other passengers lift their faces. The bus comes to a halt and the doors open.

‘Are you sure this is the place you want?’ the driver says, looking up the empty road.

‘Low Drove?’ she asks.

He nods, looking her up and down. She thinks of Angie.

‘Yes, then.’

‘Right you are.’

She steps off onto a grassy verge. It’s only when the bus pulls away that she sees just how isolated this place is. The road is without markings. On the other side a weeping willow slumps across the tarmac. The back of the road sign is a hundred metres behind her and, in the opposite direction, the back of the bus receding into the distance, its indicator flickering as it turns right out of the village. She stands still and the wind whips around her. She pulls her coat tighter but it doesn’t make much difference. Further up the road she sees a few houses, and – she squints – a red Wall’s ice cream sign swinging in the distance. The only sign of life. She walks towards it, the edge of the road crumbling into earth. Why would Maureen and Patrick want to live here? Why would anyone? It offers nothing more than isolation. Is that what they want? To disappear? But then why do the interview in the newspaper, telling everyone that they’ve moved here? In case Angie comes home, she supposes.

The photograph on the cutting shows them standing outside a yellow-brick detached Victorian house with a short privet hedge, but Chloe doesn’t see many houses at all, let alone this one. As the red sign gets closer she hears it creaking and, in that same moment, a string of four seventies bungalows comes into view. They are the same grey brick she’s seen in other villages, long gardens that run up to the road, windows with net curtains, a sensible car in the drive. She walks past and catches her reflection in the window. Inside, she sees tall armchairs topped with lace doilies. She knows that style. This is a place for the old.