Kes has not been back to Wickmoor in nineteen years. She returns to bury her mother, sell the house and leave inside a week. The marsh has moved — it sits half a mile further inland than the maps allow, and the lane she learned to cycle on now ends in reeds. Nobody in the village finds this remarkable. The parish records note the same thing happening in 1846, and in 1782, and they note what the village did about it on both occasions.