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thrust of panic. She was thirty-one years old. Young, she corrected. But already she was beginning to live in the past. She stared at the assistant in the sandwich bar, patiently regarding her, waiting for her to make up her mind. And she almost felt a confused and pitiful old lady. She ran her eyes along the counter. She and Guido had always had the same sandwiches - egg and cress. Despite the restaurant he had been an almost vegetarian, rarely, guiltily, tucking into huge, bloody fillet steaks before solemnly declaring it had been horrible, disgusting, and he never would indulge again. Until the next time. Meggie caught her breath at the sudden vision of Guido making solemn promises - to love, cherish and obey.
    And she had believed him.
    “Bacon and egg,” she said firmly, “and a chocolate covered flapjack and a diet coke.”
    Everything must be different. Everything. She glanced behind her at the growing, impatient queue.
    “One pound eighty five, please, love.”
    Meggie handed over two pound coins, waited for the change to rattle into her palm, picked up the plastic carrier bag of lunch and moved outside into the street. The valleys were all this shape, long and narrow. There was only really room for one main street. The others climbed either side in steep terraces. The gardens were slanted too. Coal dust dark, with soil so impregnanted with good Welsh coal you could almost believe you could burn it on a fire. But the mud could be a threat too. It was prone to slipping in heavy rain as the slag heap had on that terrible day in Aberfan. The land in these valleys shifted because someof the hills were not real hills but dumps of waste soil, slag heaps deceitfully grown over with grass that never grew as true lush vegetation but always looked half starved of nutrients; pale, poor scrub.
     
    Even the streets were deceitful, the houses built on the catacombs of the ancient mine workings that burrowed beneath most of South Wales. Many of the buildings bore their cracks like the battle scars of a sword slash. The Coal Board would compensate. It was a common enough phrase. And people today were anxious to forget all about the old days and put them behind them. The mines were shut, the tips overgrown or flattened into playing fields, the hollows filled with dark water and renamed - as Llancloudy Pool had been.
     
    A couple of the mines had been opened as museums. Lest we forget sorts of places, Pwll Glo. Black Gold. Kids were taken down on school trips to teach them about their heritage. But all that people imagined about “the valleys” was different now. And the kids wanted to forget it all. Every bit of it. The male voice choirs, the chapel, the mines, the dirt, the hardship. All was gone except the real mountains. Nothing could shift those. “Not even a Conservative Government”. It was the standing joke during Maggie’s time. Those mountains and this graveyard remained unchanged. One a sign of stubborn constancy, the other a reminder of mortality. Not that she needed one in her job.
     
    The fleeting thought conjured up the picture of that still dripping body being dragged from the small pond. Meggie frowned, her fingers looped around the handle of the plastic carrier bag tightening. It had been a strangeway to die - even for a mad woman. Had no one seen her approach the pool, sensed her intent - if intent there had been. Had no one heard a splash - and wondered - or seen her struggle? Had there been no witnesses?
    Megan walked slowly, struggling still with the question of intent. Bianca’s mind had been occasionally threatening, frequently downright peculiar. Always unfathomable, invariably illogical.
    So why was she, Megan’s doctor, who had seen so many manifestations of her patient’s sick mind, disturbed by the fact that she was unable to understand Bianca’s final illogical act?
     
    As she continued down the main street she pondered this point and like leafing through the pages of a reference book she