บท 4: Chapter 4

“Well, the local schools get out tomorrow,” Nan says. “Why don’t you just go down to the bus stop to say hello?”

Okay, yeah, Appington might be dull, but it’s not thatdull. Ryan rolls his eyes, fobs her off, and makes some vague enquiry as to dinner, and she forgets about it quickly enough.

Ryan doesn’t go—but he does watch the same figure drop down from the bus the next day.

* * * *

Ryan takes the first few weeks of every summer holiday to re-learn the area surrounding Appington. It’s a picturesque village, the type that has a pub and a post office and a stone church and crumbling old houses that line the village green, and absolutely nothing else. Its air is still, heavy, bringing nothing new, and even the whack of summer cricket bats are muffled by the sheer weight of it. It is alone in the countryside—surrounded by small brooks and hay fields, interspersed with the odd copse and one thick, dark wood running around the south of the village.