It was a dull grey afternoon in the middle of October with nothing much to commend about it. The last of autumn's leaves were drifting from trees, an unseasonable wind was too chill for even the most ardent of gardeners to be out and about, the street was deserted and the children not yet out of school. Overhead the sky was low with cloud that shifted steadily yet never seemed to clear. She walked briskly, Horace trotting reluctantly at her heels, knowing that this was his exercise for the day and he had no alternative but to make the best of it.

The village was Dibton in Hampshire, and here Elfrida had come to live eighteen months ago, leaving London for ever and making for herself a new life. At first she had felt a bit solitary, but now she couldn't imagine living anywhere else. From time to time old acquaintances from her theatre days made the intrepid journey from the city and came to stay with her, sleeping on the lumpy divan in the tiny back bedroom that she called her workroom, which was where she kept her sewing-machine and earned a bit of pin money making elaborate and beautiful cushions for an interior-decorating firm in Sloane Street.

When these friends departed, needing reassurance _

`You're all right, aren't you, Elfrida?' they asked.

`No regrets? You don't want to come back to London? You're happy?'

_ she had been able to set their minds at rest:

`Of course I am. This is my geriatric bolt-hole. This is where I shall spend the twilight of my years.'

So by now there was a comfortable familiarity about it all. She knew who lived in this house, in that cottage. People called her by her name.

`Morning, Elfrida,' or

`Lovely day, Mrs Phipps.'

Some of the inhabitants were commuting families, the man of the house setting out early each morning to catch the fast train to London and returning late in the evening to pick up his car from the station and drive the short distance home. Others had lived here all their lives in small stone houses that had belonged to their fathers and their grandfathers before that.