The train arrived at Aldermoor Halt at twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, which was exactly when the timetable said it would, and Margaret Hollis stepped down onto the platform with her leather satchel over one shoulder and a small travelling case in her other hand, and she stood for a moment on the empty platform and listened to the train pull away behind her, the sound of it diminishing slowly into the distance, the rhythm of the wheels on the rails growing slower and quieter, the last carriage rounding the curve and disappearing behind the stand of willows that grew along the embankment, and then there was nothing left but the quiet of the countryside, the soft movement of wind through the long grass at the edges of the platform, and somewhere far off, the low call of a wood pigeon settling into the afternoon.\n\nThe station building was small and painted a pale cream colour that had weathered over the years to something closer to the colour of old paper, the sort of cream that is not quite white and not quite yellow but somewhere between the two. There was a wooden bench along the front wall, the paint on it peeling in long strips to reveal the grey wood underneath, and a hanging basket of trailing plants suspended from a bracket above the bench, the plants still living but a little dry at the edges, the flowers gone now in the autumn, just the trailing green stems remaining. There was a notice board under a little wooden roof beside the door, and on the notice board some papers fastened with drawing pins, a timetable and some other notices she did not read, and beside the notice board a board with a map of the local footpaths enclosed behind glass, the paper inside yellowed at the corners. Margaret set her case down on the platform and consulted the letter she had folded into the front pocket of her satchel, and she read again the directions she had been given, which were brief and clear, and then she looked out at the lane that ran away from the station between low hedgerows, a lane of pale tarmac with a thin stripe of grass growing down the centre, and she picked up her case and began to walk.\n\nThe lane was quiet. A car passed her after a few minutes, a dark green car moving slowly and with some care on the narrow road, and the driver, a man she could not see clearly, raised a hand as he went by, and Margaret raised a hand in return, and then the car was gone around a bend and the lane was quiet again. The hedgerows on either side were hawthorn and elder and blackthorn, grown thickly together, and the tops of them moved a little in the breeze, and here and there through gaps in the hedge she could see fields of pale stubble where the harvest had been taken weeks ago, and further out, the dark line of a wood along the ridge. The sky above was a pale and even grey, the kind of grey that is not threatening but simply settled, the sky of a late afternoon in early autumn that has decided it will remain like this until the light goes, a sky without drama, without ambition, simply present.