Just past the primary school, on the right as you go down the hill towards town, is a small rest home. It is run by a very kind and caring lady, Mrs Jane Locke, helped by her husband Chris and teenage daughters Sophie and Anna. Mrs Locke is one of a select group who have lived in the village all their life. Currently there are six elders in the home: four women and two men, all widows or widowers. They are well cared for, and everything is done to ensure their final years pass with dignity. The business of settling in is dealt with with particular understanding; Mrs Locke knows that for many of her guests it will be their first time in a home and realises they may be apprehensive, or regretful that they are losing some measure of autonomy.

The rooms are comfortably heated, and residents are allowed, nay encouraged, to bring in whatever furniture they wish. Pets are also welcome; at present a hamster, a dachshund, two budgerigars and a chinchilla can be found there. The house is set in a spacious garden with shade provided by several tall monkey puzzles. In winter the six keep warm in front of a roaring log fire in the living room, all but one of them snacking on buttered crumpets toasted over the flames. On summer afternoons, such as today, they typically go for a walk (actually, most of them are keen on this activity at any time of the year) or simply sit outside, spaced out equidistantly in a circle, and take the air, as they are doing now.

Mrs Wallace is seventy-three. She is partially sighted, and the doctors have told her she will become totally blind within the next two or three years. She is relaxing in a wheelchair. She is a very independently minded individual, for whom it was particularly hard to come to a place like this; however it had become inevitable owing to her failing eyes and ailing legs. She used to be a hot-air balloonist, and this may have had something to do with her love of liberty, though she herself once commented to someone who made that point that she did not see how a device in which one was confined on pain of death to a basket a few square feet in size could be regarded as a symbol of freedom.