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the chintz-covered chair that had once been in the Mansell Road house while information was expertly and expensively conveyed to him: an assessment of the political situation in Namibia, a rundown on Britain's position vis-à-vis the European monetary fund, a consideration of an impending industrial dispute (opposing points of view discretely outlined}. Sydney drank tea and wondered about switching to round-pod french beans this year. On the screen, there was talk now of distresses in some far-off place; fleeing figures in a street, a man crouching with arifle. A child crying. Sydney watched and sighed, stirred by the recollection of feeling, rather than feeling itself. Poor wretches. His ghost walked among them, outraged by the world. But none of this could touch him now; lightning does not strike twice, and in any case there was nothing left for it to strike.
    Football results rolled up, and the weather. Nothing worth watching after. Sydney switched off and prepared to go to bed.
    *  *  *
    Next door, Keith Bryan also watched the news. The row he'd had with Shirley about forgetting to phone the TV repairman had petered out when he discovered that in fact it was only the plug that was faulty. Just as well, in the event, or there'd have been a hefty charge for damn all. Now, he sprawled apathetic in front of the set. At one point he was aroused and annoyed by the discovery that power workers pull in over a hundred a week. He also noted the make of car used by the chairman of British Rail, and a sexy air hostess behind the right shoulder of a departing American politician. When the newsreader started talking about unemployment figures he went out to the kitchen for a beer. There, he caught sight of himself for an instant in the mirror by the door—a shortish fellow with round shoulders reaching into the fridge for a can of Pale Ale. And knew with a spurt of anger that there was some mistake. Keith Bryan was somewhere else—a bullish, bronzed black-haired chap in a cricket sweater, with a buttery blonde in tow, drinking shorts at a bar aglow with horse brasses and copper pans. He went back to the sitting room. “Don't ask me if I want one, will you?” saidShirley. He flung himself back into his chair without looking at her. On the television screen, people shot each other in the streets of some American city; in fantasy, not fact, as he recognized from the excitable camera work and the nonchalance of the protagonists. “Shut up,” he said, “I'm following this series.”

Chapter Three

    The school, Laddenham primary, was seven minutes adult walk from the Green and various distances where children were concerned, according to age. The Coggan girls, accompanied each way by their mother, took between eight and ten minutes. Martin Bryan, when late, could do it in four and a half, running, or anything up to an hour otherwise, going by the churchyard and through the gap in the car park wall and over the building site, or dawdling along the High Street with a stop off at the sweet shop. The Paling children, Anna and Thomas, could also extend the journey almost indefinitely, if unaccompanied; whendriven by their mother in the white mini it was three and a half minutes dead, door to door.
    Martin Bryan and the Coggans went to the primary school because that was where children went to school. The Palings went there because Clare and Peter, who had opinions about education, and knew a thing or two, had observed that a good state primary school is as good as anything provided by the private sector and free into the bargain. The Coggan girls and Anna Paling did not consort out of school hours because Anna thought Tracy and Mandy silly. Thomas and Martin did not consort partly because Martin was two and a half years older than Thomas, thus laying on him the onus of any overtures that might be made, and partly because Thomas had once seen Martin crying in the school lavatory and had been intolerably embarrassed. In any case, Martin