Chapter 31

When he had made it, he sang it, and the plovers, equally intoxicated, answered him through the grey walls of rain that stood up on either side of him like the walls of a glass corridor. There was no sign of Elmer or his belongings, only the wreckage of the Thatchers’ move, bits of straw and paper, broken glass and boxes, dead plants in pots, and forlorn stalks of cotton grass that grew along the fence. Robert had the key, which Elmer had left with him. He went in, gathered up the rubbish from the kitchen floor, an…