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and devastation. At this very moment, ancient cities were being destroyed by man himself, and people were killing each other in more places than anyone could count. Maybe the dinosaurs had self-destructed, destroyed each other’s habitats and, through greed, eaten all their means of survival. This might be the future of the human race too. Epitaph: They never learned.
    There he was again, the man in the jacket. He set his tray, coffee and a cheese sandwich, on her table. “Do you mind?” he asked and, before she could say yes, went on. “If you took a saw to the dinosaur’s leg bone, any one of them, dollar to a dime you’d find it’s plastic.”
    “They have to fill in the gaps. Finding a whole one is rare, I believe.”
    “Rare? Impossible! They never existed.”
    So the poor fellow was mad. Ella looked around for a guard.
    “I’d like to eat my lunch in peace,” she said to him. She, who believed in being polite even to the difficult, scowled and took her bowl of soup to the table nearest the exit.
    “Read the Bible. Read that.” He followed her and handed her a leaflet. “Those bones are the devil’s work put there by people who don’t want you to know the truth.”
    “Please leave me alone.”
    “The only truth!” He walked back to his sandwich.
    On the front of the leaflet was a picture of a young man, reddish-blond hair and beard, fair complexion: Jesus turned into a corn-fed North American. In her days of faith, she might have been upset by the image, but now she only shook her head. The truth, according to the words on the page, was that the world was a recent creation and that the other story was a satanic invention. Her quiet contemplation of prehistory spoiled, she left the rest of her soup and headed for the bus stop.
    At home she took out her sketch pad and drew a frame for a human diorama. No trees, but an array of tables with white cloths. She left out the other diners and focused on one table for five. There she was, wearing a new black sweater with her silver necklace. Sam next to her already looking thin. Donna leaning towards him across the table as though she were trying to hold him back. Graeme and Holly. All of them aware that this anniversary was the last. She froze them all in that good family moment before Holly threw her wine across the table, splashing her mother’s jacket, and shouted, “This is false. This isn’t right.”
    She drew the shady outline of another person standing behind Sam’s chair, and no, it wasn’t the waiter or a hooded, faceless person with a scythe. It was a woman called Glynis. The children had known all about her and kept quiet. Sitting there, dabbing at her jacket, she felt betrayed by all four of them, her “nearest and dearest”. Then she’d walked away from the table and away from them knowing, as no doubt they also knew, that she would return and nurse Sam to the end. As she had done, trying not to be tight-lipped, not to cry, not to blame. Failing some days. When he died, she’d collapsed into the embrace of grief.
    Dinosaurs had small brains, but maybe when a mate died or a child suffered, their hearts ached and they roared in pain.
    The phone rang. “I have voted,” she said, and pressed the OFF key.
    She and Paul always exchanged a little kiss when they met. Over coffee and cookies or muffins, they talked of so many things that the time passed quickly. If they got involved in too much discussion of the current state of the world, the never-ending wars, greed and destruction, the government’s harsh policies, a depressed silence overcame them and they had to rally themselves with a glass of wine. After that they talked of hockey or their grandchildren. And they shared laughter.
    Early on, Ella had given Paul the Sequence to read as a token of trust and he hadn’t let her down. His response had been gentle and he’d made two good suggestions about Rosemary’s one-way trip to Holland. Jody, the so-called editor at The Grove, had only