DIANA
Hans parked on the village green below the vicarage. The large building looked out from between the green crowns of the trees like a familiar, pale, flushed face. Only in a country where the air is free of dust particles, and the rain is not polluted or acidic, can plaster age like that. A country, where one only washes the windows before the holidays, and more for the sake of the holidays than because they need a washing. He slammed the car door and squeamishly touched the windscreen, covered in crushed bugs. He pressed down with his index finger until the nail turned white, and made a vertical line through that bloody gunk beyond the reach of the wipers. It could have been an i, or the first stroke of another letter. Everything begins with a vertical line, after all, and those let
