“It wasn’t in your bag but I found it, anyway,” he said.

He set the lamp on the asphalt beside the girl, and she saw that he’d brought an ordinary flashlight.

“What I need,” she said without losing her calm, “is a special lamp to regulate the timing. A stroboscopic lamp. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“ . . . but you can’t imagine me owning one, is that it?”

“That’s it,” he confessed. “I keep forgetting you’re a mechanic. I’m sorry.”

He went back to look for the lamp and, as he passed the neighbour’s trailer, shot a black look at the man who was gazing out the window at him, smiling.

The girl plugged in the lamp and asked Jack to start the engine. She let it warm up. Jack looked over his shoulder as she shone the flashing beam of light on the timing marks that needed aligning. Once this task had been accomplished, she slid under the vehicle again and drained the motor oil, using the cat’s emergency dish. She also checked the oil in the gearbox and the differential.

“That’s all I can do,” she said, after she had changed the oil in the engine. “I haven’t got the tools for the brakes and the lube job. We’ll have to go to the garage.”

“Of course,” said the man. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Fix me something to eat while I take a shower. I’m ravenous.”

She was sweating and covered with oil stains. He made her a chicken salad with all sorts of fruit and vegetables: the table was set and everything ready when she came back from the shower, with her hair pulled up and wrapped in a towel, and wearing her white nightgown, though it was the middle of the afternoon.

After their meal she asked if the cat had eaten anything.

“I haven’t seen him,” said the man.

“No? Was he here last night?”

“But . . . I thought he was with you!”

“So did I!”

She reflected for a moment.

“He must be out in the field,” she said.

What the girl called “the field” was just a vacant lot with some clumps of grass behind the trailer park. The cat often wandered off there. It was obvious he wasn’t especially fond of asphalt.

“He was born in the country,” said the girl. “His parents came from the country and his grandparents, too.”

The cat had a full lineage of country ancestors, which accounted for his fondness for long walks in the grass. There was no cause for alarm, but the girl still couldn’t resist an urge to go out in the field for a look. She took off her nightgown, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, got out of the minibus and walked over to the fence; she called the cat softly but he didn’t come; she put two fingers in her mouth and whistled: that was no more successful.