Others were new altogether, inhabiting the council estates that ringed the village and employed by the electronics factory in the neighbouring town. It was all very ordinary, and so undemanding. Just, in fact, what Elfrida needed.

Walking, she passed the pub, newly furbished and now called the Dibton Coach-house. There were wrought-iron signs and a spacious car park. Further on, she passed the church with its yew trees, lych-gate and a noticeboard fluttering with parish news: a guitar concert, an outing for the mothers'-and-toddlers' group. In the churchyard, a man lit a bonfire and the air was sweet with the scent of toasting leaves. Overhead, rooks cawed. A cat sat on one of the churchyard gateposts, but luckily Horace did not notice him.

The street curved and at the end of it, by the dull bungalow which was the new vicarage, she saw the village shop, flying banners advertising ice-cream, and with newspaper placards propped against the wall. Two or three youths with bicycles hung about its door, and the postman, with his red van, was emptying the post-box.

There were bars over the shop window to stop vandals breaking the glass and stealing the tins of biscuits and arrangements of baked beans that were Mrs Jennings's idea of tasteful decoration. Elfrida put down her basket and tied Horace's lead to one of the bars, and he sat looking resigned. He hated being left on the pavement, at the mercy of the jeering youths, but Mrs Jennings didn't like dogs in her establishment. She said they lifted their legs and were dirty brutes.

Inside, the shop was bright with electricity, low-ceilinged and very warm. Refrigerators and freezers hummed and there was strip-lighting and an up-to-date arrangement of display shelving, which had been installed some months ago, a huge improvement, Mrs Jennings insisted, more like a mini-market. Because of all these barriers, it was difficult to know at first glance who was in the shop and who wasn't, and it was not until Elfrida rounded a corner (Instant Coffee and Teas) that she saw the familiar back view standing by the till and paying his due.

Oscar Blundell. Elfrida was past the age when her heart leaped for joy, but she was always pleased to see Oscar. He had been almost the first person she met when she came to live in Dibton, because she had gone to church one Sunday morning, and after the service the Vicar had stopped her outside the door, his hair on end in the fresh spring breeze and his white cassock blowing like clean washing on a line.