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Otherwise, it wouldn't have sent Sophy back to him only to take her away again. For a moment, he teetered on the verge of thinking the thought:
if only she hadn't come back to me
. But he shied away from it. A week with the real Sophy was worth the loss of the Sophy in his head. Even a much shorter time would have been enough. A day, an hour, a minute, even a brief glimpse of her.

Not that he would have recognised her if life had given him only a brief glimpse, of course. That thought put him into a real cold sweat; small, delicate pearls of water gathering on his forehead. To have seen her and not recognised her, that would have been awful.

So. He hadn't given up. He just didn't care enough to do anything.

The ceiling needed repainting. There were huge cracks in the white paint which, in places, had turned yellowish brown with dirt and age.

He traced the cracks with his eyes and took a certain comfort from them. They gave him something concrete and real to cling to and think about.

Paint. Repaint. Cleaning. Cover the furniture.

He turned his head. The curtains were drawn. Maybe he should have opened them before he went to bed so that he had more to see and think about.

Change the curtains. Sew new ones. He couldn't sew, of course. Besides, he had no intention of moving from bed.

Someone knocked at the door, but he couldn't bring himself to get up and answer it. That would just be the beginning. He would have had to talk. Listen. Exchange words.

Unthinkable.

He suspected it was Claire. That was OK. Claire would understand, she had a Sophy of her own. He felt a short, unexpected pang of conscience at the thought it might be Sara. She might not understand, and she might need a ride somewhere.

BY HALF FOUR,
Sara had given up all hope for the day. Before she left, her eyes fell on the piece of paper with the girl's address written on it, and she suddenly realised that she didn't know whether Sophy was still staying with George. She wrote a nice note and decided she would post the book if she had already gone back home. If Sophy liked it, she would send the two following books later. Though, she thought glumly, she probably wouldn't do that after all. Because, by then, she wouldn't be in Broken Wheel any more.

She didn't bother waiting to see whether George or Tom came to pick her up. She would walk home, either to Amy's or to Tom's, depending on where she ended up, and maybe she would come up with something on the way. A depressing thought. The only thing she managed to come up with was that she couldn't stay. Amy had said so. There was just one day left until the wedding.

Josh passed by Grace's after yet another of his trips to Caroline's front door.

‘God, I need a drink,' he said, sitting down at the counter.

Grace tried a joke. ‘Ha ha,' she said. ‘Has Caroline dumped you?'

Josh didn't laugh. Grace had the feeling her jokes often hit a nerve nowadays. She was struck by something in his expression.

‘Tell me it's not true,' she said.

‘Not any more.'

‘Caroline hitting on small boys!' Grace said to herself. ‘No offence,' she added quickly. ‘On younger men, anyway.' She smiled wryly and said, comfortingly: ‘Don't worry, no one'll believe she was the one who ended it. Or if they do, then they'll know that you would've dumped her sooner or later anyway.' She added, enthused: ‘You know, this has made my day. Caroline, who's always been so damn proper.'

‘Tough,' said Josh. Grace looked at him questioningly. ‘Not proper. Tough.'

‘Sure, sure.' Grace was fair. ‘Tough too. But annoying. Who would've thought it? She'll never be able to boss people about now.'

That didn't seem to cheer Josh up.

‘It would've been better if you'd kept it up a bit longer, so she really had time to make a fool of herself over you.'

‘Caroline would never have made a fool of herself.'

‘Oh yeah? Older women always make fools of themselves when they fall for younger men. Law of nature. Same thing with older men falling for younger women.'

He rested his head in his hands and made a half-stifled noise which sounded like a pained grunt. ‘I need a drink,' he said again.

‘That I can help you with.'

When he left Grace's, he seemed to be in an even worse mood than when he'd arrived, but at least he had an entire bottle of home-distilled liquor with him. She saw him pause just outside the door, before he shrugged exaggeratedly and set off in the direction of Hope. He was holding the bottle in one hand and just before he started walking, he took a swig from it. Even from where she was standing behind the counter, she could see the grimace on his face. Good liquor was wasted on some people. Grace was left alone with a faint feeling of unease. She could just imagine Sara's kind smile. Friendly, but slightly reproachful.

‘Damn you, Sara,' she said to no one in particular. ‘She deserved it. She would've said the same thing about me. It was just a joke.'

Since when did she have a conscience, exactly? It wasn't as though she was a part of this hole of a town.

George had made it to the kitchen table, but only because his body was kicking up too much of a fuss to stay lying down.

He stared at the red wine. He could drink it. Or go for a walk. Or keep sitting there.

If he was going to drink it, he would need to buy more liquor. That much he knew: half a bottle of wine wouldn't be enough, not nearly enough. Grace had always refused to sell him liquor, Andy too. In the good old days, it hadn't been a problem. Back then, he had still had contacts who could help him out. He could ask Claire, of course, but he suspected she didn't have much alcohol at home.

He could even walk to Hope. He could keep on walking forever.

On the way to Hope, George came across Josh, who waved a bottle in the air when he caught sight of him. He seemed to have already started on it, but he wasn't drunk yet. ‘Can I tempt you with a glass?'

‘Sure,' George eventually said without much enthusiasm.

Josh shrugged and handed him the bottle. ‘Women,' he said.

They kept walking. Neither of them much cared where they ended up. Josh took another swig and handed the bottle back to George, who drank without grimacing in the slightest.

‘The darkness is back,' George said.

‘I should've stuck to men,' Josh said. ‘Though if I'm honest I didn't have much luck there either.'

George raised the bottle. ‘To Sophy,' he said. He drank and handed the bottle back.

‘To Caroline,' Josh said, raising the bottle again. There was a defiant look in his eye, but George didn't even notice that he had spoken.

‘I want Caroline,' Josh explained.

‘She's not coming back this time,' George said.

When Tom got to the bookstore to drive Sara home, she had already left. He was just on the way back to his car when John waved him over from the hardware store.

‘I talked to Sara,' he said. ‘About the wedding. Couldn't let them sacrifice you.'

‘I agreed to do it,' he said.

‘Amy wouldn't have liked it.'

‘What did Sara say?'

‘She agreed, of course.' John nodded. ‘I think she realised that it's not right for her to stay here. There's nothing to stay for.'

Tom went quickly back to his car, annoyed at Sara for having said something that he himself had been thinking. Why the hell couldn't she just make up her mind? One minute she was talking about wanting to stay, looking so sad (that he couldn't help but want to make her feel better). Like a damn puppy, with those big eyes of hers. The next minute, she was talking about there being nothing to stay for.

She wasn't at his house either. Clearly the charade was over. He went through the living room to the kitchen. The sight of Sara's books almost made him smile.

He took a glass and a bottle of whiskey out onto the porch. There was a natural calmness out there; the sound of the birds and the insects so familiar that they slipped softly through his consciousness without really registering. He noticed them only because of the faint sense of home and peace they created.

To the south of the house, he could see the few bright lights which made up Broken Wheel. The town itself, or what was left of it, was barely visible at night. He could see scattered lights from the apartments where Claire lived. Between them, the compact darkness of the cornfields.

The light from the houses reminded him that the town was still out there. The darkness created distance, told him that everything going on there could wait.

Maybe it was mad, thinking that she might actually want to be married to him. Especially now that the whole town seemed to love her. Sometimes, when he looked at the way everyone somehow lit up in her presence, he couldn't help but think of Amy.

It was as though the town needed a centre, something to gather around, and Sara had filled the void Amy had left behind, with Amy's shop and her books and her almost universal kindness.

He thought of Sara and the bookstore and the market and of a street which seemed alive once more, which suddenly seemed to be almost constantly bathed in sunlight, and he thought of a town which in a few short weeks had been transformed from black and white to Technicolor.

Broken Wheel – now in colour! Coming soon to a movie theatre near you.
Aside from the fact that the cinema had closed down long ago, of course. And that Sara would be going back to Sweden, the bookstore would be closing, the people who had gathered around it would scatter again, and Main Street would return to its former … tranquillity.

He had a strong suspicion that the contrast would be too much for them. That it would be the death blow to a town which, in some strange way, he loved; that the quiet, calm everyday would no longer be enough after Sara and her books.

What did it matter, anyway? He didn't need books and markets and dance evenings at the Square, nor big, expressive eyes … his treacherous mind lingered on that moment on the sofa, the look in those irritating eyes just before he kissed her, the feeling of her body pressed against his, warm and inviting.

You're a damn idiot, Tom.

Caroline was sitting in the kitchen with a cold cup of tea, trying to ignore the clear signs of depression. Caroline didn't get depressed. Her spirits were never low. She definitely didn't feel passive or apathetic or sit staring blankly ahead of her.

Perhaps she should have been furious instead, she thought. Break something, scream, throw things. She took a sip of her cold tea and couldn't bring herself to make a new one.

It was already night, it must have been nearly one. Two, even. A few hours earlier, she had been standing motionless in the middle of the hallway; just as passive, just as silent, just as completely incapable of doing anything.

He had knocked on the door with more force than sense and waited almost an hour outside her house, maybe in revenge, to really give the neighbours something to talk about; maybe because he really did want to see her again.

‘Come on, Caroline,' he had said to her door. ‘Is that really the worst you can be? Caroline the-beautiful-woman-who-breaks-young-hearts?'

But she had simply stood there. She hadn't even touched the door, though she somehow knew that his hand must have been pressed against the other side of it.

That in itself was no revolutionary realisation.
Everyone
who talked to a closed door eventually put their hand on it. If she actually had gone over to the door, she was convinced that she would have been touching the exact same spot as he was. That was simply how things were.

She had no intention of touching him in reality. If she
almost
touched him from behind the safety of a closed door, she might as well have actually opened the door, and then she might as well have actually touched him.

Or kissed him.

But she had taken a step towards the door when he said her name. Certain things simply couldn't be helped. He wouldn't miss her, but she couldn't quite bring herself to think that that was a good thing.

It was stupid, really, that it all felt so … sad.

ON THE DAY
of the wedding, William was getting ready to openly, albeit under the cover of early morning, defy Caroline's words about how undignified it was for a minister to tend to his own garden.

He was planning on pottering about in the garden without a single thought for his clerical duties. It was essentially true that there wasn't much to be done in the garden in the middle of October, but there were bushes and there was earth, and a real enthusiast could easily make do with that.

He set about his work with suitable reverence in the face of the greatness of God. It smelled of cool earth and near-rotten leaves, and the remains of a slowly dispersing early-morning mist. He imagined he could smell its damp scent, but it might have been nothing other than the dew-covered grass.

It was a glorious day.

And there would be a wedding! Not many got married in Broken Wheel these days. Fewer than those who came to church services, even. He would have preferred the opposite. Weddings were actually more important to a town than ordinary services. And, he thought, they were days when people found it easiest to get close to God, days where they were reminded of what God was really about.

He was just going through his sermon in his head when he spotted a lone foot sticking out from beneath a bush.

For a moment, he was worried he would have to round off the wedding with a funeral, but then he heard a faint, pained sound. The foot twitched slightly.

He leaned forward and said, uncertainly, to the bush: ‘Excuse me?'

He wondered what was required in a situation like this.

‘Is everything OK, my child?' He tried to sound calm and fatherly, but sounded mostly foolish. The next time, he addressed the bush as ‘my friend' instead.