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the future would never arrive.
    Could this really be Amy’s Broken Wheel? The same town in which her brother had run a newspaper called the
Bent Farmer
and where one of the schoolteachers had started an improvised mobile library using a cargo moped?
    She continued down the street anyway, mostly to get away from the looks the men were giving her. Not hostile, exactly, just very focused on her, perhaps because there was nothing else to look at. If she could just find Jimmie Coogan Street, she thought, then Amy’s town might magically reveal itself, complete with wooden facades and women in skirts and the kind of timeless Amish-esque existence she had imagined when she read Amy’s letters.
    The midday sun was bearing down mercilessly on one empty shop after another. Many of them did actually have beautiful old wooden fronts, suggesting the town had, once, been charming and lively. But this impression was ruined by the shops themselves. Some of them had badly covered windows, others had broken windows no one had bothered fixing or boarding up.
    Slender trees which didn’t seem to have ever taken root properly had, at some point, been planted outside some of the shops, and there was something which looked like an attempt at a park at the end of one of the crossroads. The town didn’t get any more charming than that.
    It took her twenty minutes to walk the length of Broken Wheel, and she hadn’t even caught a glimpse of a Jimmie Coogan Street.
    On the other side of the road there was an advert for a pesticide:
Control corn root worm!
it shouted to the world, two by three metres in size and at least twenty years old.
With Dyfonate 20-G Intersectitude. Ideal for the big corn grower!
    Underneath it was a smaller sign announcing that this was Broken Wheel. That was all. They hadn’t even bothered to add the ‘Heart of Iowa’ or ‘Garden of Iowa’ or any other attempt at civic pride. The sign was so small that it seemed to Sara almost to be apologising for intruding.
    It took two trips back and forth before she finally found Jimmie Coogan Street, and then only by a process of elimination. There was no sign and the street itself was nothing more than a dark alley with high brick walls on each side.
    After that, she felt completely deflated. She stopped in front of the diner. Above the door, she could make out faint gold lettering on the washed-out red background.
Amazing Grace
. When Grace herself waved her in, she was almost thankful to let someone else decide what she should do.
    Grace poured her a cup of coffee without waiting for her to order and slapped a lump of pink minced meat on to the griddle behind her.
    The diner was practically empty. Only three cars were parked outside: two dusty, faded blue pickups, and a white van used to repair the roads. Three men wearing yellow reflective jackets were sitting around a table eating eggs and bacon and drinking coffee, an early dinner rather than a late lunch or very late breakfast. George was sitting in the far corner at a table on his own.
    â€˜Not much town to explore, right?’ said Grace, her enormous arms resting on the counter again.
    â€˜A pretty town,’ Sara said, without quite believing it herself.
    â€˜A damn hole, that’s what it is. If I were you, I wouldn’t stay.’ She paused for effect. ‘Run while you can, that’s all I’m saying. I’ve never understood why Grandma chose to stay.’ She lit a cigarette and continued in almost the same breath: ‘So George is your driver? I’m not one to gossip, but he’s had a rough time of it. Might need a little support. Wife left him. It was after that he started drinking. Not constantly, you know. Periodically. Managed to keep his job at the slaughterhouse for a few years.’
    Grace hadn’t bothered to lower her voice, but George showed no sign of having heard what she said. Perhaps selective hearing was a talent he had been forced