A Prospect of Vengeance

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The children had spotted the ruin of old Mrs Griffin's cottage that very first morning, years before, and from the one place in the farmhouse where it could be seen through the trees: a little low window, cobwebby and covered with dead flies, halfway down the narrow twisty back stair to the kitchen.

And then there had been no holding them.

Rachel and Laurence had known about it already, of course.

The estate agents' man had explained that it was part of the property, as a more-or-less unwanted appendage to the farmhouse plot below the orchard, also dead on the line of the motorway and not part of the fields which had been already sold to the adjacent farms. At the time this had rather aroused Rachel's curiosity, so that when Laurence had embarked on a second tour of their dilapidated (but, as they dummy2

then thought, strictly temporary) new home, she had gone exploring for herself.

Actually, she had never quite reached old Mrs Griffin's cottage then. But she had seen enough, because what she had seen she had disliked even in the safety of the bright sunshine. Indeed, although long afterwards she maintained that her dislike — even then, even then — had been instinctive, or intuitive, it had also been something fiercer than mere dislike: it was in reality strictly practical and maternal, primarily safety-conscious. The children were still little then, but no longer restrictively little.

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