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that their cat Buzz had been found. It was dead and looked as if it had been attacked savagely by a wild creature. One leg had been chewed at and half torn off. Jane commiserated.
    ‘Oh, how awful. A fox?’ she ventured.
    ‘Maybe,’ said Mrs Chicopera. They were standing at the little wrought-iron gate of Jane’s front garden. She noticed that Mrs Chicopera was looking past her at her house. Jane turned round and saw the Major staring at them through the front window. He was moving his mouth in an odd way so that the hog’s bristles of his moustache wagged up and down.
    ‘When are your guests leaving, Mrs Capel?’ asked Mrs Chicopera. Jane was surprised. The Strellbriggs were not a secret, but she had not bothered to tell anyone in particular about them.
    ‘This Sunday,’ said Jane.
    ‘Okay,’ said Mrs Chicopera, apparently satisfied, and moved on.

    **

    It was a relief when Sunday came. Mrs von Hohenheim was due at midday and the Strellbriggs were packed and ready to go by ten o’clock. They waited in the sitting room with her mother, looking subdued. Jane smiled on them benevolently. Now that they were going she felt indulgent towards them. The unspecified, unspoken fear had lifted.
    When it was twelve o’clock Mrs von Hohenheim did not arrive. At half past Jane irritably rang her house in Wiltshire, but there was no reply.
    ‘Your daughter hasn’t shown up,’ said Jane to the Strellbriggs.
    ‘Oh dear!’ said Daphne mildly.
    One o’clock came. Jane had rung the Wiltshire house several times, but with no results. Now deeply angry, she served a makeshift meal to her guests. After lunch Mrs von Hohenheim had still not arrived, so Jane tried ringing the offices of OPEN but, needless to say, it being a Sunday, she got only an answering machine. By three o’clock Jane had decided that the only course of action was to drive the Strellbriggs down to Wiltshire. The problem was that she could not leave her mother on her own for that length of time, and it would be impossible to get someone in to look after her at such short notice. She rang her brother Tony and got the answering machine. She had forgotten that they were away on holiday that week. By four o’clock rage had been superseded by an icy, despairing calm: she had put her mother and the Strellbriggs into the car and was driving down towards Lockington Magna.
    The Strellbriggs’ attitude surprised Jane; they seemed indifferent to the anguish that they and their daughter were causing. Jane tried to interrogate them about their daughter’s possible whereabouts and what might have happened to her, but they were quite unhelpful. The Major at one point said that it was ‘a rum go’, and Daphne remarked that it was ‘most odd’, but that was the extent of their reaction. When they arrived towards evening at Lockington Magna, Jane found Mrs von Hohenheim’s bungalow locked and dark. She fetched a torch from the car and shone it through the windows. The house was not only deserted, it was empty: not a single item of furniture could be seen.
    Jane wanted to scream loud and long, but she did not because she knew it would upset her mother. She steadied herself, returned to the car, got in and explained the situation to the Strellbriggs. The Major once again said that it was ‘a rum go’ at which Jane felt a strong desire to get the Strellbriggs out of the car with the luggage and leave them there stranded. Restrained by fifty or so years of self-sacrifice, she drove them back to her home. Repeatedly she asked them about their daughter, but the Strellbriggs’ ignorance or reluctance to communicate was phenomenal. The only fact that they were able to vouchsafe was that her husband Mr von Hohenheim had died many years ago.
    In exasperation Jane asked if Mrs von Hohenheim really was their daughter.
    ‘Oh, yes!’ said the Major. ‘Daphne had her out in Africa. Funny little thing she was: looked like a monkey. Do you remember, Daphne, we used to call her