She reaches the red sign – it’s a newsagent’s. She goes to push open the door, but it’s firmly shut. She checks the opening times. Wednesday afternoon: Closed. Who does that anymore? She pulls the cutting from her pocket, careful to hang on to it in the breeze. She studies the photograph of the Kyles, looking for some clue, a tree or a landmark, and then searches the road again. She walks on a bit further, but there’s nothing here. Along a bit, opposite the newsagent’s, is one tall red-bricked house with a nursery alongside it. Through the polythene she spots muted yellows, pinks and reds – roses probably. Otherwise, this place is grey. She walks back to the newsagent’s and stands outside, looking up and down the road. They’ve got to be here. Why would they have done an interview letting everyone know where they’d moved to if they weren’t really living here? She puts her head up to the newsagent’s window, just in case anyone is there in the back. The cold of the glass pushes against her nose. She cups her hands either side of her eyes to get a better view. Her breath fogs up the glass. She steps back, wipes it away, and then she sees it. A postcard in the window:

Lodger wanted.

Room for rent in Elm House, Low Drove. Would suit single professional. Preferably female.

There’s a phone number, but it’s the name that makes her gasp out loud.

Contact Mrs Patrick Kyle.

Maureen. She scans the road again. Elm House. So that’s where they are. It’s as if that postcard had been waiting for her. But where is Elm House? She walks again, the length of the village, all the way to the sign reading Low Drove, and then all the way back to the sign she’d seen from the bus on the way in. But there is no Elm House.

She goes back to the bus stop and looks across at the weeping willow, at its branches scraping the ground. That’s when she spots it: the lane the tree is hiding. She crosses, makes her way through the fronds of willow and a lane opens up in front of her. It’s narrow, not much wider than one car, the verges scarred with tyre tracks. And there, in the distance, on the left-hand side, a pale yellow-brick house, a short privet hedge, a blue car in the drive – Elm House.

Just a look, she reminds herself.

She walks until she’s opposite the house. She waits on the other side of the road, staring at the orange keystone above the white double-glazed front door, spreading outwards to the net curtains at the two bottom windows, slightly askew, a sign perhaps of the leftover chaos from moving. She pictures them surrounded by boxes, trying to find a perfect place for everything.