The A17 dual carriageway linking Newark to Boston was busy at half-past six in the morning with tractors, trucks, vans and cars moving in both directions. Even though it was the end of June, the morning air had an edge and the weak sun, low in the sky, glimmered on finger-like steeples seeming to indicate the direction to follow should the star deign to brighten the place up.
Just before the village of Threekingham Jake indicated left and Paul Hudson turned into a narrow hedge-lined lane with a grass verge on either side.
A mixture of trepidation and weariness determined Alice’s unusual quietness. Her night had been restless and troubled by bad dreams.
“It’s such an insignificant road,” she murmured “until you think that it was once an Anglo-Saxon track and that soon we might find a for
