Malcolm, sitting in the driver’s seat of his Honda Civic, looked at his phone and checked the local weather forecast for the day ahead. It was going to be sunny in the morning, but an icy blast was heading in from the east bringing rain from mid-afternoon. He thought about his wife, Mary, who had been the belle of Hawksmead. He remembered the first moment he’d seen her when he was aged sixteen. David Winstanley was having a gathering at his house. There were quite a few girls aged fourteen and Malcolm was entranced by their female forms. Mary was five foot four inches tall, slim and sweet, and Malcolm promised himself that one day he would marry her. But it took two more years at boarding school, three years reading English at Oxford, and two years of working and living back with his paren
