On the outskirts of a small town, stood a house, one of about a dozen comprising a close. It was not quite a cul-de-sac, because the builders had left vacant a plot of land at the end of the road – probably in order to extend the road into the fields beyond at some later date – should more houses be required. It was this green oasis at the end of the road, that the children who lived in the identical red brick houses of the close used to gather to play