CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEJohnny Fabian drove Mirrie up on to the Common and off the road along a sandy track that didn’t lead anywhere. Such a long time ago that most people had forgotten all about it a man called Sefton had tried to build a house there. The land being common land, he wasn’t allowed to get very far with it, and when he finally threw the whole thing up in disgust and went away, people from all the neighbouring villages came along and cleared the site. There really wasn’t much to take away—a few preliminary loads of bricks, a broken-down wheelbarrow, and a pile of gravel. It didn’t take long for the Common to come back to its own with a crop of loosestrife, and later on with seedlings of gorse, heather and birch. Today the only indication that there had even been an invading house
