Tok. Paul Finch

on.” He raised a hand. “You’d better not go. I’ll go.”

      “It’s okay. It’s not even dark yet.”

      “It’s getting dark.”

      “Don, there are coppers all over the estate.”

      “Yeah, and like Helga said, what bloody good have they been?”

      Berni took her coat off again. She wasn’t usually so quick to follow her husband’s orders. A born and bred Scouser, ‘toughness’ and ‘independence’ were her two middle names. But there was something about visiting The Grove that she found oppressive. Its brooding aura, not to mention the aura of its queenly owner, always seemed to sap her energy to resist. She wondered if this was the spell the aristocracy had woven in olden times, when an awed peasantry made them superior simply by believing that they were. Miriam was no aristocrat of course, but she had been raised among the colonial classes.