It took a few days for Martha to notice the little silver hatchback. People were always leaving their cars or trailers in the dead-end beside the small reserve, sometimes for weeks, or dumping rubbish in the small hours of the morning, brazen under cover of darkness. Martha, who lived opposite, would wake to see a cheap broken cupboard or a pile of worn tyres or an old fan, say, lying like a silvery corpse in the grass.