‘The Boy in the Field’

Here is what happened one Monday in the month of September, in the last year of the last century.

During English, Ms. Humphreys gave them fifteen minutes to answer the questions she’d written on the board

He had worried he might not recognize the gate, one among many, but a loop of yellow police tape hung

“Will you make us a sign?” he said. “We’ll pay you the going rate.” He had been pleased when the idea came

When her mother announced that the detective was coming back to talk to them, her first thought was that

Last May, a few weeks after the man appeared in the churchyard, she had started going out with Luke

With its original gold lettering, MacLeod & Son, above the door and its black-and-white-tiled entrance

As she left the bus station, Zoe could picture the woman in her black T-shirt, with her wide smile and tangled

She had not planned to look for the American but, day after day, there he was in the middle of biology or Latin

When she got home from the butcher’s, her mother was circling the ficus with a watering can. Without looking up

He watched his fingers playing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and tried to ignore the telephone directories

Before he could protest—he was doing his homework—Zoe had crossed the room and was standing beside his desk

In the cloakroom they started talking about the millennium. Heather’s mother, an accountant, claimed that

When he saw the postcard of Big Ben by his plate, his first thought was: She found me. Somehow his first mother

She answered the door, expecting someone collecting for charity or leafleting for a good cause, and discovered

"Give me a minute, Ms. Lang,” said the porter. “I think he left a message for you.” In the background she heard

Five in the afternoon, already dark. He was at the middle till, handing a girl a one-pound coin and two

Through the window of the bus he watched the sun, glowing palely above the leafless branches of the elms

Somehow, he had thought, once they caught the man, he would be able to talk to him. But that was absurd.

The Salon of Second Chances was held on the penultimate day of the twentieth century, from four