What A Village Can Do
Her name was Rana.
Pim met her, a week later, on a Saturday afternoon. The pastor's wife had organised a small tea at the chapel — Rana, the pastor and his wife, the estate agent, Iris from the parish council, Pim's grandfather, Pim's mother, and Pim. Rana had been, by then, in the pastor's spare room for six days. She was sleeping. She was eating. She was, very slowly, beginning to smile.
She was twenty-eight, not thirty-five — the cold and the fear had, the pastor's wife said, made her look older.
She had been, in the country she had come from, a primary-school teacher.
She had also, very particularly, been the daughter of an old neighbour of Mrs Vogel's. This — which Pim's grandfather had figured out from looking at her surname on her appeal paperwork — was the unexpected piece. Rana's father had, in the 1980s, been a young engineer who had spent two years in the village working on the regional power lines. He had, in those two years, lodged with Mrs Vogel. He had, after returning home, written to Mrs Vogel for thirty years. Mrs Vogel had, when Rana's father had died of a heart attack three years ago, sent his widow — Rana's mother — a long, kind letter and a small inheritance.
Rana had, when she had needed somewhere to go, remembered the village name. She had remembered the address. She had walked from the train station. She had, when she had got to the village, found