The machine itself was so low in the sky that it was hidden by the tall trees in the park opposite but its searchlight backlit them in black, angular silhouette, giving the appearance of a sinister wood in a Balinese shadow play. ‘The Pointless Park airshow beginneth early tonight,’ Toby said, coming back into the warmth and closing the door so that the clothes abruptly stopped their frantic dance. Harriet looked down and smiled to herself — her brother-in-law was the only person in the world who called the neighbourhood that they lived in ‘Pointless Park’. Even she didn’t, though from time to time she tried really, really hard to do it, to say the words ‘Pointless Park’. Mentally Harriet would rehearse little scenarios in which she used the name in a conversation with Toby, saying in her mind, ‘The Japanese Strangleweed is flower-ing this week in Pointless Park,’ or ‘I hear they found another dead body in Pointless Park today,’ knowing how happy it would make him if she did.
