Vierzon

Vierzon, on a Tuesday in January at three in the afternoon, looks like a great many medium-sized towns in this country: a wide avenue, shops of which one in three has pulled down the shutter, a roundabout with a metal sculpture, and a lot of people who look as though they have something to do.

Judith parked outside the bank branch.

She stayed there twelve minutes.

She knew perfectly well that she would not go in, and that going in would serve no purpose: you do not ask a counter clerk to name a client for you. She also knew that she had driven sixty-eight kilometres to look at a shopfront.